A man, convicted of terrorism in 2013, who threatened gendarmes with a knife on Friday February 13 under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris died early in the evening after being shot several times by one of them, facts which were immediately taken up by the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT).
The events took place around 6 p.m. during the daily rekindling of the flame of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, under the Arc de Triomphe, a stone’s throw from the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, when a man equipped with a knife and a pair of scissors rushed at a gendarme from the music of the mobile gendarmerie who was participating in the service of honor at the ceremony.
Another gendarme used his service weapon to neutralize the attacker, according to the PNAT. Hit by several bullets, the man was transported to hospital. Early in the evening, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office announced in a press release that he had died from his injuries.
The man had previously called the Aulnay-sous-Bois police station (Seine-Saint-Denis) saying that he was going to “make a massacre”, “kill the cop”according to a close source cited by AFP. The alert was given by the Aulnay police officers, but the man could only be geolocated when he was at the scene of the attack.
Conviction in Belgium
Born in 1978 in Mantes-la-Jolie (Yvelines), the attacker, Brahim Bahrir, of French nationality, was listed as S for radicalization, according to a source close to the case cited by AFP. He was sentenced in 2013 in Belgium to seventeen years of criminal imprisonment, said the PNAT, for stabbing two police officers at the Molenbeek metro station, in the suburbs of Brussels. He had injured them slightly.
After being incarcerated in Belgium, he was transferred to France on January 27, 2015, following a decision recognizing the enforceability of the judgment of the Brussels court of first instance, continued the prosecution.
After serving his sentence, “he was released from detention on December 24, 2025, and had since been monitored as part of judicial supervision ordered by the sentence enforcement court on June 17, 2025. He was also the subject of an individual measure of administrative control and surveillance” (MICAS), added the PNAT. Living in Aulnay-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis), he had to report to the police station every day, according to a source close to the case.
The music policeman, initially presented as very slightly injured by the knife, was not, the weapon having “stuck on the collar of his gabardine”specified the PNAT.
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The anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office announced immediately after the events that it had opened a blatant investigation, adding that a prosecutor was going to the scene. The investigation was opened for attempted assassinations of a person holding public authority in relation to a terrorist enterprise and participation in a criminal terrorist association.
It was entrusted to the anti-terrorist section of the Paris criminal brigade, as coordinating service, the judicial police of the Paris police headquarters and the general directorate of internal security (DGSI).
President Emmanuel Macron congratulated “the police, who reacted immediately” and so could “stop this terrorist attack”on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. In a message posted on the X platform, the Minister of the Interior, Laurent Nuñez, addressed ” All [son] support “ to the policeman “who intervened” et “acted with coolness and determination in the face of the terrorist threat that wanted to strike us”.
