Gas tanks and documents in Arabic were found in an unmarked auto next to Notre Dame cathedral sparking fresh terror fears and at least two arrests, reports said today.
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PARIS, Sept 8 French police have arrested a second couple in connection with a auto found carrying seven gas cylinders near Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, a judicial official said on Thursday.
That evening, its owner went to the police to report that his is radicalized daughter was missing but without saying his auto had also disappeared, the prosecutor’s office said.
Two alleged Islamist sympathisers were in custody last night after seven gas cylinders were found in their vehicle, which they had abandoned in a no-parking zone 300 yards from Notre Dame cathedral in the heart of Paris.
Bernard Cazeneuve, the interior minister, said that the pair, believed to be from the Loiret…
Police said the auto contained six gas tanks and may have been part of a “test run” for a terror attack.
There were seven gas cylinders in total, say Paris police, located in the front seat with one of them already empty. Larry is our main news editor.
The prosecutor’s office said all four are suspected of links to “radical Islamism”.
A second couple – a 34-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman – was detained in the same case on Tuesday.
“We think he may have been trying to carry out a test run”, a Paris police official said Wednesday, referring to the car’s owner.
Police said there was no detonators and that the vehicle was parked in a side street opposite the cathedral on the left bank of the Seine.
Thousands of extra police and soldiers have been deployed to patrol sensitive sites across France since 130 people were killed by Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers in multiple attacks on Paris last November 13. An abandoned auto near the building was complete with seven full canisters of gas.
The criticism comes after authorities faced heavy fire for alleged security lapses in July, when 86 people were killed by an Algerian ploughing a truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the resort of Nice.
Less than two weeks later, two young extremists murdered a priest near the northern city of Rouen.
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One “worrying factor”, he told Le Monde, was the threat of the return to France of around 2000 French nationals either on their way to Syria or wishing to return.
