Chérif Chekatt: Everything you need to know about Strasbourg terror suspect

The gunman suspected of killing three people and injuring 13 near Strasbourg’s Christmas Market served several terms in prison for armed robbery and is believed to have been radicalised in prison.

29-year-old Chérif Chekatt has been on France’s “S” file terrorist watch list since 2015, and his profile matches that of self-styled “jihadists” who have carried out other attacks in France. 

Born in Strasbourg, he is a French citizen and has some 27 convictions in France, Germany and Switzerland to his name, according to Strasbourg's public prosecutor Rémy Heitz. In 2016, he was released from prison in Germany and, before the attack on Tuesday night, was wanted in connection with an attempted murder and an armed robbery, according to a source close to the investigation.

On Tuesday morning, police raided Mr Chekatt's home and found grenades, a .22 firearm and two hunting knives, but failed to capture him. Five associates were, however, detained.

“He fell into crime when he was still in his teens,” the source said.

In 2011 he was jailed for six months for assaulting a teenager with a broken bottle, and completed his last prison sentence in France in at the end of 2015, around the same time as the November 13 Paris attacks that left 130 dead.

He went on to serve a further jail term in Germany for robbing a dental practice and a pharmacy, and was deported to France last year after completing his sentence. 

The suspected motive for the shootings on Tuesday night is terrorism. “Terrorism has again struck our soil,” said Mr Heitz at a press conference on Wednesday, noting that witnesses heard the gunman shout "Allah Akhbar" during the attack. 

Laurent Nunez, the junior interior minister, said: “The individual appears to have been radicalised in his religious practices during his prison terms.” Specialised anti-terrorist prosecutors are in charge of the investigation.

In prison, the suspect became known for violence and  repeated attempts to convert fellow-inmates to a radical form of Islam. 

However, several witnesses have said they did not hear him shout Islamist slogans during the shootings. A source close to the investigation said it remained to established whether he had acted “out of jihadist motives or out of despair because he was being hunted and must have known he was likely to be sent back to prison.”

Before the Strasbourg attack, he was considered to be an extremely high-risk suspect, intelligence sources said.  France’s DGSI, the domestic intelligence service, placed him under "active" surveillance following his release from a French prison in 2015, Mr Nunez said.

As a child in Strasbourg, he grew up alongside six brothers and sisters. Although he worked for local authorities after leaving school, he had not been employed since 2011.

Investigators are trying to establish whether Mr Chekatt travelled to Syria or Iraq to join an Islamist group, or whether he was radicalised entirely in France, according to sources close to the case.