This archive report was first published on 6 October 2019.
French President Emmanuel Macron is set to lead a tribute to the victims of the Paris police attack on Tuesday.
Christophe Castaner, the head of the Paris police, has admitted that there were 'failings' in the force's handling of the radicalization of Mickael Harpon, the 45-year-old computer expert who carried out the attack.
Castaner initially claimed that Harpon had never given any reason for alarm, but investigators later revealed that he had been in contact with adherents of Salafism, an ultra-conservative branch of Sunni Islam.
Harpon had defended atrocities committed in the name of that religion, according to anti-terror prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard.
On Sunday, Castaner said that Harpon had caused alarm among his colleagues as far back as 2015, when he defended the massacre of 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper.
However, despite a police official questioning the colleagues, none of them wanted to file an official complaint.
Castaner will face questioning by parliament's intelligence commission on Tuesday over the attack, its president Christian Cambon said.
"We're going to try to find out what these failings were," Cambon told AFP.
Harpon's personal life had been subject to an extensive background check early in his career, since he worked with classified information as part of the Paris police's intelligence division.
He was given an official sanction in 2012 over a case of domestic violence three years earlier.
Harpon's wife has been taken into custody after officials found they had exchanged 33 text messages shortly before the attack, ending the conversation with "Allahu Akbar" ("God is greatest").
Harpon was shot dead after killing four people with a 33-centimetre (13-inch) kitchen knife and an oyster knife during the lunchtime attack.
