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Police Arrest Man In Paris Soldier Stabbing, Say Attack Was Religiously Motivated

French police probe links to London's machete murder of a British soldier three days earlier.

FRANCE 24, LE MONDE (France)

Worldcrunch

PARIS –A 22-year-old man was arrested at dawn Wednesday on suspicion of being the culprit in the recent stabbing a French soldier in the wake of the London slaying of a British military guard.

Sources close to the authorities indicate the suspect is a “Muslim radical,” although the government remains careful to make any correlations with the London slashers, reports Le Monde.

Prosecutors at a midday press conference said the suspect confessed to the stabbing in the outlying Parisian business district, and said it was religiously motivated, France 24 reported.

The French soldier Cedric Cordiez, who was stabbed in the neck while patrolling a transport hub in Paris, has since been released from the hospital.

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La Défense RER station where the events occurred (Greenski)

French Interior Minister Manuel Valls remained prudent regarding any links with the fatal May 22 machete attack against a 22-year-old British soldier by men declaring it was revenge for wars in Muslim countries. Still Valls, as quoted by Le Monde, added that “someone tried to kill a soldier because he was a soldier.”

The suspect, who was apprehended at the home of a relative, has a criminal record (theft, robbery, weapons charges…). The investigators say they were able to identify him using fingerprints left at the scene, reports France 24.

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Society

Protests Derailed: A History Of Polish Railways Getting Political

Polish state railways have been accused of deliberately keeping protestors from reaching the capital for an anti-government protest march. This is not the first controversy the railways have faced.

Photo of trains in the Warszawa Rembertów Station, Warsaw, Poland.

Warszawa Rembertów Station.

Piotr Stanisławski via Wikimedia Commons

Last June, Polish opposition leader and former President of the EU Commission Donald Tusk called on Polish citizens to protest against the “authoritarian” steps taken by the ruling party, PiS. Estimates by state organizers approximate that 500,000 participants marched in Warsaw, with smaller marches occurring in other Polish cities.

“Do you have enough of [PiS’s] lies, theft and corruption?” Tusk asked in a video published on his Facebook page. "Then come to Warsaw on the 4th of June… we will show them our might”.

In the days leading up to the protest and on the day of the event itself, passengers and groups of demonstrators blamed state railways for delayed train permits, inaccessibility for those with disabilities and a deficit in the train's ability to transport participants to the capital.

“This is how rail functions in Poland,” an anonymous passenger told Gazeta Wyborcza, “It is impossible to get to Warsaw for the March at 12pm from Szczecin.” The same passenger told Wyborcza they were “speechless” at the realization, adding that “it’s an outright exclusion of rail communication”.

This is not the first time that the state-run rail lines have come under fire for allegedly political acts.

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