Paris shooting suspect Abdelhakim Dekhar charged with attempted murder

Abdelhakim Dekhar, the man suspected of opening fire at Liberation, a left-wing newspaper, and the headquarters of the Societe Generale bank in Paris earlier this week, has been charged with attempted murder and kidnapping.

Arrested in parking lot in the Paris suburb of Bois-Colombes on Wednesday during a full-scale manhunt, Dekhar, 48, was reportedly found half-conscious in a car trying to commit suicide.

"Everything suggests that he tried to commit suicide," said France Interior Minister Manuel Valls, adding that a letter had been left at the crime scene, though he did not elaborate on its contents.

However, reports said the letters had denounced capitalism and told of "a plot aimed at the return of fascism in the media, in banks, in the policy on suburbs," according to Paris prosecutor Frederic Molins.

DNA matching Dekhar has been found at the scene of both crimes scenes, prosecutors say. And while that may well be the case, Dekhar's lawyer, Remi Lorrain, has tried to highlight his client's "right to be presumed innocent."

France announced on Thursday that Dekhar had been jailed before in the 1990s for his part in a multiple murder that killed three policemen.

That crime was a high-profile robbery that ended with a police chance that's now called the "Rey-Maupin affair."

In addition to the policeman, a taxi driver and one of the robbers were killed. Dekhar served four years in prison and was charged as an accomplice.