The pregnant wife of an Islamist murderer was shot dead by police at a prison yesterday after he stabbed two guards during a visit.
The woman, who has not been named, died when officers stormed a family room in which Michaël Chiolo, 27, had locked himself after seriously wounding the guards at the high-security Condé-sur-Sarthe prison in Normandy.
The woman had smuggled in the ceramic knife he used to carry out the stabbings “in the name of Allah”, a police spokesman said.
Alassanne Sall, a prison staff representative, said that one of the guards suffered a serious chest wound and that the other was slashed in the face and back.
“It was truly a murder attempt,” he said. “There was blood everywhere. The family visiting unit was a battle scene.”
Officers used stun grenades as they entered the room to detain the prisoner. Nicole Belloubet, France’s justice minister, said that there was “no doubt as to the terrorist nature” of the incident.
Witnesses were said to have suggested that Chiolo had expressed a wish to avenge the death of Cheriff Chekatt, who was shot dead by police after killing five people and wounding 11
at a Christmas market in Strasbourg in December.
Chiolo was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2014 for killing a Holocaust survivor. While in prison he was sentenced to a further year for asking fellow inmates to “re-enact” an attack by Isis gunmen on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris in November 2015.
Prison staff in France have been calling for better working conditions. In January last year guards held three weeks of protests after one of their number was attacked by a jihadist inmate at a high-security jail in northern France.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/wife-of-islamist-shot-dead-in-france-prison-attack-z6phvf6sc
