French prosecutors charge Lyon factory attacker with terrorism and murder

Yassin Salhi drove into the Air Products factory before beheading his boss and setting off explosion, say prosecutors

French police secure the entrance of the Air Products company in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, near Lyon

A man accused of beheading his boss at a French chemical factory has been handed preliminary murder and terrorism charges. He is, investigators suspect, tied to Isis extremists.

Yassin Salhi is facing a long list of charges and was told he would be staying in custody, Paris prosecutor's office spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said.

Sahli is thought to have entered a gas factory in Lyon, southeast France, and beheaded his boss before putting his head on the factory gates. He is also thought to be responsible for an explosion and injuring two others.

Preliminary charges under French law mean that investigators have a strong reason to suspect involvement in a crime, and give them more time for deeper investigation before deciding whether to send the case to trial.

France is back on high terror alert after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris in January.

According to his lawyer, Salhi said he was acting purely for personal reasons after being reprimanded by his employer. But prosecutor Francois Molins said his acts went well beyond a simple workplace dispute.

With a long-bladed knife and a gun in hand — as well as two brand new flags emblazoned with the Muslim declaration of faith, Salhi tricked his boss into getting into the van, knocked him unconscious and strangled him, Molins said.

About 500 metres before reaching the plant, he decapitated his victim, and then almost immediately sent two photos of the remains to a friend in Syria: One was a selfie, and the other included an image of the severed head placed carefully on the torso.

He reported cried out Allahu akbar, the Arabic phrase for “God is great,” when tackled by firefighters attending the blaze at the Air Products factory.

In a subsequent message, the friend, a Frenchman identified as Sebastien Younes who has been in Syria since November, indicated he was in contact with Islamic State higher-ups about the images.

“Yassin Salhi beheaded his victim before hanging his head to the factory fence in an effort to give maximum publicity to his act — he admitted to it during his interrogation,” Molins said.

“This bears the trademark of the Islamic State group's propaganda which regularly calls for terrorist attacks to be carried out in France and more specifically, to slit unbelievers' throats.”

Additional reporting by Press Association