The discovery of a vehicle near Notre Dame Cathedral last Sunday containing six gas canisters sparked a security alert.
Advertisement
The official said the arrest isn’t linked to the arrests last week of four women and a man over aborted attacks.
Investigators said her fingerprints were found in an abandoned auto containing gas cylinders and diesel that was found near Notre Dame Cathedral last Sunday.
The three other women are still being questioned after a auto containing gas cylinders was found in the French capital on Sunday.
The judge charged Ornella G. with association with terrorists to commit attacks and attempted murder in an organized group linked to a terrorist enterprise and ordered her jailed, the prosecutor’s office said. She was known to intelligence agents as someone who was looking to go to Syria.
Police found a handwritten pledge of allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi inside the purse of Ines Madani.
The third woman, Amel S., 39, who lived at the house, also was arrested along with her daughter, about to turn 16 but potentially implicated in the “terrorist project”, according to the prosecutor.
Investigators are seeking to determine whether Sarah H. was with the pair at the time.
After police shot and killed Abballa, she then was supposed to marry Adel Kermiche, who killed a priest in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, France, in July before he was killed by police.
He said 700 French jihadists were now fighting with Isis in Syria, including more than 200 women.
They were guided by the IS in Syria, anti-terrorism prosecutor Francois Molins said on Friday.
IS claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks in November that killed 130 people and also claimed the truck driver who crushed 86 people to death in Nice in July as one of their “soldiers”.
France is on heightened alert after a series of attacks since January 2015 that have killed 238 people and made security a hot topic in campaigning for next year’s presidential and parliamentary elections.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that police had arrested 293 people this year for “links to terrorist networks”.
“This amounts to networks that have been dismantled and attacks that have been prevented”, Cazeneuve said on a trip to Chateauroux, central France.
“We are involved in an extremely intense, round-the-clock mission to protect the French public, and we are getting results”, Cazeneuve said.
Advertisement
He added that 17 foreigners had been expelled this year for posing a “serious threat to public order”.
