“He seemed like all of us”: before the Trappes attack, Kevin T.’s murderous drift, between isolation and racist obsession

In the corridors of Les Saules college, an imposing block of red bricks in Guyancourt (Yvelines), we remember a teenager who was elbowing. Kevin T. “felt he was a boss.” “He had an inferiority complex,” a former friend commented to Le Figaro. Twenty years later, a mass of journalists flocked to the fourth floor of the Paris judicial court this Thursday evening. The day before, the same Kevin T., 39, completed 96 hours of police custody in the premises of the Anti-Terrorism Department (SDAT), before being transferred to the courthouse depot. Then he was presented to an investigating judge, accompanied by his lawyer, Mr Baptiste Bellet, before being indicted for a plethora of extremely serious offenses, including “assassination and attempted assassination in relation to a terrorist enterprise”.

A week ago, on October 23, Kévin T. was arrested along the RN 10, in a commercial area of ​​Coignières, without putting up any resistance. In a leaked photo of his arrest, the handcuffed man is bundled in a navy blue padded jacket, slumped against the wheels of his car, with a haggard look...