PARIS, November 22 (RAPSI) – Abdelhakim Dekhar, who was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of carrying out the shootings in media offices and at the headquarters of the Societe Generale bank in Paris this week, will not be answering any questions for the moment, his lawyer said, as quoted by France Presse.

“Not having access to his case file, my client has chosen for now to invoke his right to remain silent,” Remi Lorrain said.

The police were granted an extra 24 hours to keep Dekhar in custody, pending further investigations into attempted murder and kidnapping.

An unidentified man opened fire in the offices of the Liberation newspaper on Monday morning, wounding a photographer’s assistant. Shortly after, he made his way to the La Defense business district, where he fired outside the main office of the Societe Generale bank. No one was hurt. The man then hijacked a car and forced the driver to drop him off in the centre of the city.

The man is believed to be the same person who stormed into the Paris headquarters of BFMTV news channel on November 15, threatened staff with a gun and then made off.

The manhunt went on until Wednesday night, when the suspect was detained in Hauts-de-Seine, the western inner suburbs of Paris.
Dekhar was already convicted in 1998 and sentenced to four years in prison for aiding and abetting in the procurement of the gun used in the October 1994 shooting attack by student Florence Rey and Audry Maupin.