(Reuters) The fugitive Strasbourg man suspected of shooting and knifing people as he shouted “Allahu Akbar” at the French city’s Christmas market is a criminal who turned radical Islamist in jail, officials say.
Neighbors remember Cherif Chekatt as an ordinary local guy, but to security agencies the 29-year-old had represented a potential threat for some time, his beliefs hardened behind bars.
Chekatt grew up in the Cite du Hohberg, a large, tough housing estate built in the 1960s, where he lived at his parents’ apartment in the Rue Tite Live.
He has 27 criminal convictions for theft and violence, officials say, and has spent time in French, German and Swiss prisons. Now police are seeking him as the suspect who killed at least two people on Tuesday night.
