French Investigators Seek Possible Accomplices in Plot to Attack Church

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/world/europe/france-student-church-attack-paris.html

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PARIS — Investigators are searching for potential accomplices of an Algerian man who is suspected of planning to attack at least one church and is thought to have been involved in the killing of a woman near Paris, the French authorities said on Thursday.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls told France Inter radio, “This kind of individual does not act alone” and there were signs that planning for the thwarted attack was carried out “in connection with an individual who could be in Syria.”

The Algerian, a 24-year-old computer science student, was arrested on Sunday after he called the emergency services to receive treatment for a gunshot wound. The police found several weapons in the man’s car and home, as well as documents indicating that he was planning an attack on at least one church in Villejuif, a southern suburb of Paris.

In an interview on the TF1 television station Wednesday night, Bernard Cazeneuve, the interior minister, indirectly confirmed that the suspect’s name was Sid Ahmed Ghlam, as had been reported in the French news media.

“The Interior intelligence services had been notified about Ghlam in the spring of 2014,” Mr. Cazeneuve said. “They summoned him and retrieved connection data from his phone.”

”This did not reveal anything,” said Mr. Cazeneuve, adding that the intelligence services made similar checks earlier this year when Mr. Ghlam traveled to Turkey, but found nothing suspicious.

François Molins, the Paris prosecutor, said on Wednesday that DNA and ballistics evidence tied Mr. Ghlam to the killing of Aurélie Châtelain, a young woman who was found dead in her parked car in Villejuif on Sunday. Le Monde reported on Thursday that Ms. Châtelain’s death was thought to have been the result of a botched carjacking by Mr. Ghlam, during which he accidentally shot himself in the leg.

Le Monde, quoting an anonymous police official, also reported that Mr. Ghlam seemed to have been acting at the behest of an individual abroad, who told him specifically to target a church and gave him the location of a car parked in a Paris suburb with weapons in its trunk.

In his radio interview, Mr. Valls said 178 Roman Catholic places of worship were being protected by security forces. Mr. Cazeneuve also said the government would carry out “dynamic and efficient” security measures, including giving police officers stationed outside places of worship a more mobile role, to protect those sites across France.

Mr. Cazeneuve told reporters after meeting with the archbishop of Paris that the new measures were “precisely the guarantee that whoever attacks these locations will be likely to be faced with security forces that can immediately take action.”

Six planned attacks on French soil have been thwarted since the summer of 2013, according to the Interior Ministry.