Abdelhakim Dekhar: Paris gun suspect named by French police

Abdelhakim Dekhar has been identified by the French authorities as the man arrested on suspicion of carrying out recent gun attacks in Paris.

Abdelhakim Dekhar was taken into custody at about 19:00 from a vehicle in a car park in Bois-Colombes, north-west of Paris.

Authorities said the gunman had been jailed in 1998 for his role in a string of fatal shootings in Paris.

Last Friday a gunman threatened a Paris TV station and on Monday attacked Liberation newspaper office and Societe Generale HQ.

Prosecutors said late on Wednesday that samples of Abdelhakim Dekhar’s DNA matched that from the crime scenes.

They said he was not yet in a position to be questioned and the reading of his rights had been postponed.

Abdelhakim Dekhar was arrested in a stationary car in an underground car park following a tip-off from a member of the public.

Police union official Christophe Crepin said: “My colleagues noticed he was not very lucid. They deduced that he had taken medicines, because of the capsules nearby.”

Some media sources have suggested he may have attempted suicide.

Abdelhakim Dekhar is believed to have been the third man in the so-called Rey-Maupin affair, named after a young couple with links to anarchist groups who bungled an attempt to steal weapons from guards and then hijacked a taxi.

In the subsequent chase and shootout, three policemen and the taxi driver were killed, as well as Audry Maupin.

Audry Maupin’s girlfriend, Florence Rey, was released from jail a few years ago.

Their story was compared to the controversial American film, Natural Born Killers.

At his trial in 1998, Abdelhakim Dekhar protested his innocence, claiming he had been recruited by the Algerian secret service to infiltrate the French far-left. He served four years.