No Terror Link Found in Gun Arrest at Disneyland Paris
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Version 0 of 1. PARIS — A 28-year-old man who was arrested carrying two guns at a hotel in Disneyland Paris on Thursday has no known links to terrorism but was still being detained by the police, the French authorities said on Friday. Officials at the prosecutor’s office in Meaux said in a statement that the investigation, including analysis of the man’s telephone records, had not established “any link with a terrorist act.” A young woman who had accompanied him to the hotel but fled had been “found and questioned,” but there was nothing to incriminate her at this stage, according to the statement. The investigation is being handled by the prosecutor in Meaux, a town about 30 miles east of Paris and near the amusement park. The case has not been transferred to the Paris prosecutor’s office, which handles terrorism investigations. The man was apprehended by Disney security personnel on Thursday afternoon after two semiautomatic 7.65-millimeter pistols and a box of cartridges were discovered in his luggage at a security checkpoint. The man, who did not resist his arrest, was also carrying a French-language version of the Quran. Reports in the French news media said that the man was a convert to Islam who co-managed a cafe in the 14th Arrondissement of Paris. Officials in Meaux said the man told investigators that he was keeping the weapons and ammunition with him because he was moving from one residence to another and did not want the weapons to be picked up by someone else. The man was known to the police only for traffic violations, the prosecutor’s office said. France has been in a state of emergency since the Nov. 13 attacks by the Islamic State in and around Paris that killed 130 people. Privacy laws in France prohibit the names of some criminal suspects from being identified in the news media. |