Terror suspects arrested in raids across Europe after Paris attacks
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FRENCH, German and Belgian police arrested more than two dozen suspects in anti-terrorism raids yesterday, as European authorities rushed to thwart more attacks by people with links to Islamic extremists in the Mideast.
Rob Wainwright, head of the police agency Europol, told reporters that foiling terror attacks was become “extremely difficult” because Europe’s 2,500-5,000 radicalized Muslim extremists have little command structure and are increasingly sophisticated.
Highlighting the fears, a bomb scare forced Paris to evacuate its busy Gare de l’Est train station during yesterday morning’s rush hour. No bomb was found.
Visiting a scarred Paris, US Secretary of State John Kerry met French President Francois Hollande and visited the sites of the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket where 20 people, including the three gunmen, were killed.
French and German authorities arrested at least 14 other people yesterday suspected of links to the Islamic State group. Thirteen more were detained in Belgium and two arrested in France in an anti-terror sweep following a firefight on Thursday in the eastern Belgian city of Verviers.
Two suspected terrorists were killed and a third was wounded in that raid on a suspected terrorist hideout, and federal magistrate Eric Van der Sypt said the suspects were within hours of implementing a plan to kill police.
Belgian authorities are searching for more suspects, and found four military-style weapons including Kalashnikov assault rifles in more than a dozen raids, Van der Sypt said.
Belgian authorities did not give details of the people detained or even those killed, but said most were Belgian citizens.
Belgian authorities stressed that the targets of their crackdown had no known connections to last week’s attacks in France.
Belgium has seen a particular large number of people join extremists in Syria, and is “the worst affected country in Europe relative to population size,” said Peter Neumann of the London-based International Center for the Study of Radicalization. He estimates 450 people have left Belgium to fight with Islamic radical groups in Syria, and that 150 of them have returned home.
The hunt continues for potential accomplices of the three Paris gunmen. The Paris prosecutor’s office said at least 12 people were arrested in anti-terrorism raids in the area, targeting people linked to one of them — Amedy Coulibaly — who claimed ties to the Islamic State group. Police officials earlier said they were seeking up to six potential accomplices.
In Berlin, police arrested two men on suspicion of recruiting fighters for the Islamic State group in Syria. Prosecutors said 250 police officers participated in the dawn raids on 11 residences that were part of a months-old investigation into a group of Turkish extremists.
Kerry’s visit to France came after the Obama administration apologized for not sending a higher-level delegation to Sunday’s massive rally in Paris, which drew more than 1 million people to denounce terrorism.
Hollande thanked Kerry for offering support, saying: “You’ve been victims yourself of an exceptional terrorist attack on September 11. You know what it means for a country ... Together, we must find appropriate responses.”
In a separate speech to diplomats, Hollande said France is “waging war” against terrorism and will not back down from its international military operations against Islamic extremists in Iraq and northern Africa. France’s Parliament voted this week to extend airstrikes against Islamic State extremists in Iraq.
The Belgian raid on a former bakery was another palpable sign that terror had seeped deep into Europe’s heartland as security forces struck against militants, some of who may be returnees from jihad in Syria.
That investigation had started well before last week’s rampage in Paris, but Belgian authorities are separately looking for possible links between a man they arrested in the southern city of Charleroi for illegal trade in weapons and Coulibaly.
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