More attacks foiled on French ‘Riviera’

5 jihadi suspects arrested

NICE, France, Sept 28, (Agencies): Planned attacks on sporting events, schools and religious sites on the French Riviera have been foiled since the killings of 86 people on Nice’s seaside promenade in July, the city’s prosecutor has said.

“Several cases have been passed on to the anti-terrorism prosecutor in Paris. It was about religious sites, during certain celebrations, sporting events, stadiums, schools,” Prosecutor Jean-Michel Pretre told France 3 television, according to excerpts from a documentary programme published on its website on Tuesday in advance of broadcast.

These cases concern “people who started to articulate things that are rather precise about a type of target or even a specific target”, the prosecutor is quoted as saying.

The documentary is to be broadcast on Wednesday.

France is on high alert after a string of militant attacks over the last two years.

A Tunisian man was able to drive a 19-tonne truck along a packed Nice promenade, mowing down people in the Bastille Day crowd on July 14, before he was shot dead by police.

Emergency rule has been in place since attacks on Paris in November last year in which Islamist militants killed 130 people.

Another 17 people were killed in January 2015 in attacks that began with the shooting of journalists working for Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly that had published cartoons mocking Islam.

Police in Spain, Belgium and Germany on Wednesday arrested five people suspected of forming a cell that spread propaganda and sought to recruit militants for the Islamic State armed group, officials said.

The Spanish Interior Ministry said the cell, made up of four Spaniards and one Moroccan, posed “a grave, concrete and continued threat to security in Europe.”

A ministry statement said the five worked for the Islamic State group by spreading information on several internet sites, among them a Facebook page called “Islam en Espanol” (Islam in Spanish). The site, allegedly managed by two suspects arrested in Belgium and Germany, had 32,500 followers and was growing rapidly, the ministry added.

The statement said one suspect was arrested in Brussels and another in Wuppertal, Germany. Two arrests took place in the northeastern Spanish city of Barcelona and one in the north African Spanish enclave city of Melilla.

Pretre

Praised

The ministry said the group praised and encouraged IS attacks and sought recruits. The ministry said the cell directed its activities toward young Muslims of northwest African background.

The ministry said 113 suspected pro-jihad activists have been arrested in Spain since 2015 while Spanish police had helped arrest 30 more in other countries.

The European Union’s anti-terrorism coordinator, Gilles de Kerchove, said the new arrests show just how much intelligence-sharing is improving.

“The security services and the law-enforcement agencies are sharing much more information than they were before,” he said, on the sidelines of a conference on countering extremism by the Club de Madrid think tank in Brussels. “It’s impressive to see the number of plots which have been foiled in recent weeks, the number of people who have been arrested.”

The statement said one suspect was arrested in Brussels and another in Wuppertal, Germany. Two arrests took place in the northeastern Spanish city of Barcelona and one in the north African Spanish enclave city of Melilla.

The ministry said the group praised and encouraged IS attacks and sought recruits. The ministry said the cell directed its activities toward young Muslims of northwest African background.

The ministry said 113 suspected pro-jihad activists have been arrested in Spain since 2015 while Spanish police had helped arrest 30 more in other countries.

The European Union’s anti-terrorism coordinator, Gilles de Kerchove, said the new arrests show just how much intelligence-sharing is improving.

“The security services and the law-enforcement agencies are sharing much more information than they were before,” he said, on the sidelines of a conference on countering extremism by the Club de Madrid think tank in Brussels. “It’s impressive to see the number of plots which have been foiled in recent weeks, the number of people who have been arrested.”

Released

In Germany, the state interior ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia released a statement saying police had detained a 20-year-old Spanish citizen with Moroccan ancestry who “allegedly spread videos with cruelties on social media mostly in Spain.” It said police also confiscated hard drives, laptops and mobile phones.

Cybercriminals offering contract services for hire offer militant groups the means to attack Europe but such groups have yet to employ such techniques in major attacks, EU police agency Europol said on Wednesday.

“There is currently little evidence to suggest that their cyber-attack capability extends beyond common website defacement,” it said in its annual cybercrime threat assessment in a year marked by Islamic State violence in Europe.

But the internet’s criminal shadow the Darknet had potential to be exploited by militants taking advantage of computer experts offering “crime as a service”, Europol added: “The availability of cybercrime tools and services, and illicit commodities (including firearms) on the Darknet, provide ample opportunities for this situation to change.”

Overall, the report found, existing trends in cybercrime continued to grow, with some of the European Union’s member states reporting more cyber crimes than the traditional variety.

A Danish court on Tuesday acquitted four Danes accused of aiding a Copenhagen gunman who killed a filmmaker and a Jewish security guard in twin attacks in February 2015.

They had been charged with “terror offences” for allegedly providing support to Danish-Palestinian Omar El-Hussein ahead of the second attack, which took place outside a synagogue.

The four men, Bhostan Hossein, 26, Liban Elmi, 21, Ibrahim Abbas, 23, and Mahmoud Rabea, 32, smiled at each other and their lawyers when the judgement was read aloud.

Danish Justice Minister Soren Pind wrote on Twitter that authorities would “study the verdict and see whether to appeal.”