Alex Trelinski
A FRENCH national has been arrested after a knife attack inside Valencia’s Great Mosque.
A mosque official suffered a head injury with Policia Local officers subduing the attacker.
Paramedics sedated the man who was taken to the city’s Clinical Hospital.
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The assailant, 22, told police and health staff that ‘Allah had ordered him to kill people’.
According to the Las Provincias newspaper, he shouted: “The devil is a creation of Allah, the Armageddon of Spain!”
The Great Mosque assault happened on April 13, but details only emerged on Monday.
The Frenchman went into the building on Calle del Palancia and stabbed a Syrian national, 59, in the forehead with a knife.
He required several stitches at a health centre.
A witness reported seeing the young man in an agitated state who shouted insults at one of the mosque leaders for no obvious reason.
The official- who was the subsequent stab victim- tried to calm him down and warned he would be thrown out if he continued to behave aggressively.
The aggressor then broke several objects and two police officers tried to calm him down before reinforcements arrived.
He shouted in Arabic and threatened to injure more people, prompting officers to rush at him to stop the situation escalating out of control.
The man reportedly offered ‘strong resistance’ to being handcuffed with a judicial source telling Las Provincias that police ‘used minimum necessary force’ to arrest him to stop further attacks.
Great Mosque leaders thanked the police for their prompt intervention.
The assailant was born in Montpellier with no known address.
He had on him a notebook with handwritten comments about Allah, as well as a rock weighing a kilo, and a book featuring stories about Muslim prophets.
