An attack, not an "attack". After a man was arrested in Annecy (Haute-Savoie) Thursday morning, accused of injuring six people with a knife, including four children, the qualification of this act may raise questions. But how is it decided to use one term over another?
With regard to the events that took place in Annecy, it seems for the moment more appropriate to speak, in the current state of the judicial procedure, of an "attack". Because if the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor's Office (PNAT) is associated with the investigation and is present on the scene, it has not yet taken up the facts.
As specified by the prosecutor of the Republic of Annecy Line Bonnet-Mathis, there is, at this stage, "no apparent terrorist motive". It is therefore impossible, for the moment, to speak of "terrorism" or "attack", according to the definitions laid down by the law.
Attack and attack, two distinct terms
When an act of such gravity occurs, it is first safer to speak of an attack in the absence of elements on the circumstances. As long as the attacker's motives are not known or clearly identified by investigators, the term attack refers generically to attacking people or places, which is the case in Annecy.
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Defined by article 412-1 of the Criminal Code, the concept of "attack" covers "acts of violence likely to endanger the institutions of the Republic or to undermine the integrity of the national territory", i.e. coup attempts or secessionist enterprises.
A frequent shortcut is to also associate the notion of "attack" with terrorism, because the two qualifiers are often joined, but legally, the term attack does not automatically imply the notion of terrorism, also framed by law.
The notion of terrorism still different
This is defined in article 421-1 of the Criminal Code. It covers "intentional attacks on life, wilful attacks on the integrity of the person, kidnapping and misappropriation" of a means of transport, if the act is committed "intentionally in connection with an individual or collective undertaking with the aim of seriously disturbing public order by intimidation or terror".
In order to determine the terrorist nature or absence of an act, the PNAT, interviewed by Mediapart in December, explained that it based its analysis "on a case-by-case basis" according to several criteria: "The motivations of the perpetrator, his personality, whether he is known to the specialized services or in relation to persons known to the specialized services for their membership of terrorist or extremist groups, his psychological and psychiatric state and finally the seriousness of the act as well as his modus operandi".
The same problem had arisen in December, when a 69-year-old man had opened fire rue d'Enghien in the tenth arrondissement of Paris. Three people of Kurdish origin had died, shot dead.
Here again, the terms "attack" and "terrorism" had been set aside in favour of an attack and the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor's Office (PNAT) had not taken up the facts, even if the racist nature of the act had been retained by the courts.