French authorites have foiled an attack by three heavily radicalised women who were being guided by the ISIS terrorist group from Syria, France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor said on Friday.
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Ornella G. told police that she and Madani tried to set the vehicle alight but “fled when they saw a man they believed to be a plain-clothes policeman”.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the women were acting on orders coming from Syria.
The trio had been plotting another attack, and were looking at train stations in Paris and south of Paris, as well as the police, as potential targets, an unofficial source said. No detonator was however found and is said the method of attack plot was odd.
Among three women arrested together Thursday was Ines Madani, a 19-year-old whose father owned the Peugeot, Molina said.
She had sworn allegiance to ISIS in a letter found in her handbag.
Islamic State militants killed 130 people in the co-ordinated attacks.
Both said the boy’s arrest was not linked to the arrests last week of four women, the 15-year-old daughter of one of the women and a man.
French security services are particularly anxious about the danger posed by extremists returning from Syria after fighting with IS forces. She was known to intelligence agents as someone who was considering going to Syria. They are aged 19, 23 and 39 years respectively. She then was to marry Adel Kermiche, who slit the throat of the Rev. Jacques Hamel, 85, during morning Mass in July in the Normandy town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, Molins said.
France’s interior minister described the pursuit as “a race against time” to find Madani and the two women with her before they struck.
“A group has been destroyed”, said French President François Hollande, referring to the arrests, while warning that “there are others [extremists groups]” remaining.
Before his death, al-Andani had called on followers of the self-proclaimed caliphate to carry out small-scale attacks on “nonbelievers” in Europe and the United States.
He said 700 French jihadists were now fighting with Isis in Syria, including more than 200 women. A series of attacks targeting young concert-goers, soccer fans and Parisians enjoying a Friday night out at popular nightspots killed over 100 people in the deadliest violence to strike France since World War II.
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Investigators told AFP Ornella G. and Madani had apparently tried to set fire to the vehicle but “fled when they saw a man they believed to be a plain-clothes policeman”.
