Student Arrested on Suspicion of Planning Attack in France

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/23/world/europe/france-student-attack-arrest.html

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PARIS — A 24-year-old Algerian computer science student suspected of planning an imminent terror attack was taken into custody in Paris over the weekend, the French authorities said on Wednesday.

The police found AK-47 assault rifles, several handguns and ammunition in his home and his car, along with notes on potential targets, 2,000 euros in cash, bulletproof vests and police armbands, according to the Paris prosecutor, François Molins.

The authorities said the student was suspected of involvement in the killing of a woman and was thought to be planning to attack at least one church. He had expressed a desire to go to Syria and had been flagged by police services as a security risk, the authorities said, but checks made in the past two years had turned up nothing to warrant an investigation.

“Detailed documents were also found, establishing without any doubt that the individual was planning an imminent attack, most likely against one or two churches,” the interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said at a news conference. “That attack was avoided on Sunday morning.”

The student, whom the authorities did not identify, is also suspected of involvement in the killing of a 32-year-old woman from northern France, identified as Aurélie Châtelain, who was found dead Sunday morning in her parked car in Villejuif, a Paris suburb.

Mr. Molins, the prosecutor, said the police had found documents written in Arabic that mentioned Al Qaeda and the Islamic State at the suspect’s home in the 13th Arrondissement, the Paris district nearest to Villejuif. He said they had also found several cellphones, a camera, a video recorder, a computer, a USB key and a hard drive among his possessions.

Analysis of those devices found “that this individual was in contact with another person who could have been in Syria, and with whom he communicated on methods to carry out an attack,” Mr. Molins said, adding that the other person had asked the student specifically to target a church.

Mr. Molins said that DNA matching the suspect’s had been found in blood traces in Ms. Châtelain’s car, and that Ms. Châtelain’s blood had been found on his coat. Ballistic tests showed that the bullet that killed Ms. Châtelain was fired by a handgun found in the suspect’s car, the prosecutor said.

He said the police were still trying to determine why Ms. Châtelain was killed; he did not indicate whether the authorities were aware of any links between her and the student.

Mr. Molins described the student as a single, childless Algerian citizen who came to France with his mother in 2001 to join his father, who was then living in St.-Dizier, a town about 130 miles east of Paris. He went back to Algeria in 2003, finished high school there and then came to France again to study computer science. He had no past convictions.

Mr. Molins said the student had called emergency services at 8:50 on Sunday morning and told medical workers that he had been wounded by an armed thief in front of his home. Police officers who responded saw that he had wounds in his left leg and kneecap. He refused to cooperate with them, and his attitude prompted officers to search his car, Mr. Molins said.

The prosecutor said the suspect had then made “far-fetched” claims that he was accidentally wounded by a gunshot to the leg while trying to get rid of all of his weapons by throwing them into the Seine. The suspect, now in police custody in a Paris hospital, has stopped saying anything to the police, Mr. Molins said.

He said a person linked to the suspect had been arrested in St.-Dizier Wednesday morning and was being questioned.

France has been on high alert since early January, when three Islamic extremists killed 17 people in and around Paris. More than 1,550 French citizens or residents are involved in terrorist networks in Syria or Iraq, according to the French government, fanning worries that some of them might perpetrate violent attacks in France.

President François Hollande told reporters that France still needed to improve its intelligence-gathering. Parliament is currently debating a bill to give the security services more surveillance and monitoring powers.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls visited two churches in Villejuif with Mr. Cazeneuve on Wednesday as a show of solidarity. “In January, it was freedom of expression, police forces and French Jews who were targeted,” Mr. Valls said. “Targeting a church is targeting a symbol of France.”