Student ‘planning attacks on churches’
Print Edition
A FRENCH IT student and known jihadist sympathizer has been arrested for allegedly planning attacks on churches, the interior minister said yesterday, some three months after Paris was hit by an extremist killing spree.
The Franco-Algerian’s plans were exposed purely by chance after the 24-year-old called an ambulance over a bullet injury to his leg.
Police traced a trail of Sid Ahmed Ghlam’s blood to his car, where they discovered an arsenal of weapons, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told reporters.
“Several war weapons, hand guns, ammunition, bullet-proof vests and computer and telephone hardware” were found in his car and his student flat in central Paris.
Cazeneuve told reporters that apart from the weapons, police had also discovered detailed research “clearly establishing that the person was planning to commit an imminent attack against one or two churches.”
Documents mentioning Al-Qaida and the Islamic State group were also found at his home, the Paris prosecutor said.
A source close to the investigation said Ghlam appeared to have carefully calculated how long it would take police to respond.
The suspect, who was admitted to a Paris hospital after his arrest, was known to intelligence services over comments on social networks expressing his desire to fight in Syria alongside jihadists.
His DNA was later found in the car of a young mother from northern France who was found shot dead in mysterious circumstances over the weekend near Paris.
Ghlam told paramedics he had received the bullet wound during a settling of scores, however investigators do not exclude that he may have injured himself.
Several members of his entourage and family have since been detained, some of whom sympathize with radical Islam, sources close to the investigation said.
Yesterday, his 25-year-old girlfriend was taken in for questioning. The sources said she was a convert to Islam and the only woman in her neighborhood who wore a full headscarf.
The arrest comes after Islamic extremists went on a three-day killing spree in and around Paris in January, leaving 17 people dead.
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