Former French jihadist converted into an ardent defender of secularism and activist against radical Islamism, David Vallat was found lifeless in Saint-Raphaël during the weekend of October 19, 2024.
Employee of a locksmith company in the town, it was his unusual absence which alerted his employer. He finally managed to have the door of David Vallat’s home opened for him by the caretaker of the building where he lived. Then discovering the lifeless body of the fifty-year-old.
Would his interventions against radicalization have irritated the circles from which he had distanced himself? Had he, on the contrary, maintained contact with unsavory circles?
An investigation has been opened and investigators will analyze his personal effects to try to explain this disappearance. However, according to a source close to the investigation, this death is likely linked to a natural cause.
In connection with the attacks of 1995
Born in Isère, David Vallat converted to Islam in the early 1990s at the age of 19. A member of a jihadist cell linked to the 1995 attacks, he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for criminal conspiracy in connection with a terrorist enterprise.
Indicating that he was deradicalized in captivity, he speaks regularly and appears numerous times in the media since the beginning of the 2010s to testify to his journey as a repentant jihadist and to fight against religious excesses.
In his book Youthful terrorpublished in 2016, it demonstrates the mechanisms that push a young person to engage in jihad, dissects the workings of recruitment and suggests avenues towards a process of deradicalization.
