Terrorist act in France prevented
Several men had allegedly plotted attack for months
PARIS— French anti-terrorism police have arrested seven men in Strasbourg and Marseille who had links to Syria and had been plotting an attack on France for several months, the interior minister said Monday.
A series of arrests in June and this past Sunday put an end to the plot and “allowed us to thwart a terrorist act that had been envisaged for a long time on our soil,” Bernard Cazeneuve told reporters in Paris. France remains under a state of emergency imposed after deadly Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL) attacks on Paris last year.
The suspects are believed to have initially wanted to target the Euro 2016 European soccer tournament earlier this year, but later focused on another target, possibly in Paris or Marseille, according to a security official. The official was not authorized to be publicly named speaking about ongoing investigations.
The June arrests involved people behind the alleged attack plot’s financing while Sunday’s arrests targeted the operational team — both groups were under orders from unidentified commanders in Syria, the official said.
Weapons were also seized in Sun- day’s arrests, the official said.
Cazeneuve said investigators are studying whether the thwarted attack was part of a larger plot to attack multiple sites simultaneously.
Five of the suspects are French, one is Moroccan and the other Afghan, and they are between 29 and 37 years old, the security official said. Cazeneuve said six of them hadn’t been known to intelligence services. The Moroccan had apparently been living in Portugal. Portuguese police said Monday that they had flagged a 26-year-old Moroccan residing in Aveiro, in northern Portugal, to other European authorities, warning that he was part of a terrorist group. In the statement, the police said they had been watching him since 2015, and he was arrested by French police over the weekend.
One of the suspects worked for the Strasbourg city government on special events, Strasbourg metropolitan area president Robert Hermann said, according to his office.
The arrests rattled nerves in Strasbourg because they came just five days before the opening of the city’s famed Christmas market, which attracts tourists from across Europe and was the target of a failed extremist plot in 2000 by Algerian and French militants who had trained in Afghanistan.
However, Mayor Roland Ries said the case had no direct link to the market, so the event will open as usual Friday — under heavy security.