The suspected Islamist who attempted to blow up a French chemical plant has admitted killing his manager beforehand.
35 year old, Yassin Salhi told detectives he had killed Herve Cornara in a parking area before arriving at the plant in Saint Quentin-Fallavier, south of Lyon, where he tried in vain to cause a major explosion.
Salhi is also reported to have sent a selfie to a Canadian mobile phone number via the WhatsApp messaging service where he posed with the severed head of his boss.
French investigators are working to determine the identity of the recipient, but were not sure whether it was an unspecified person who is now in Syria.
The revelation has done more to revive concerns about terrorism in France than it’s added to whether there is a link between the terror attack to radical groups, the paper reports.
Salhi who was linked to a militant in Syria, was arrested at the Air Products factory on Friday morning.
Yassin Salhi is a truck driver with a history of Islamic ties.
He was arrested and detained Friday after police say he crashed a truck into a US-owned chemical plant and hung his employer’s severed head on a factory gate. Police also detained his sister and wife. The three are in police custody in Lyon.
Elsewhere on Saturday hundreds of people turned out in the region to honor slain businessman Herve Cornara and denounce the violence. Dozens turned out for a minute of silence in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, the town southeast of Lyon where Friday’s attack took place at an Air Products chemicals warehouse.
Several hundred people also gathered outside a housing project in the town of Fontaines-sur-Saone to honor Cornara, 54, the manager of a transportation company that had employed Salhi since March. They recalled a kind, humble man who was active in the community of the Lyon suburb.
