Laurence Dollimore
SPANISH police have shot and injured an unarmed Moroccan man after he allegedly began shouting ‘Allahu akbar’.
The officers said in their report that they thought he had a weapon, adding that they do not expect to begin a terror investigation.
The Frenchman, of Moroccan origin, was travelling with a woman in a car when they approached the toll road on the border town of La Jonquera in northern Spain.
A Guardia Civil patrol was reportedly alerted because the man had a ‘strange’ attitude and ‘seemed to be manipulating something inside the vehicle’.
“The police asked him to get out. He finally got out with something in his hands and he moved towards the officers,” said a spokesperson for the Catalan police.
The spokesperson added that, according to the policemen present, the man ‘shouted ‘Allahu akbar'(God is greatest)’.
“The police officers repeatedly asked him to stop, shot in the air to intimidate him but as he continued to move forward, they shot him in the hip,” he said.
The man ‘then undressed’ and ‘appeared to suffer from mental problems’.
According to the Guardia Civil his life ‘is not in danger’ and he is being cared for in a hospital in Gerone.
Police say an investigation is underway.
