There was no indication that the vehicle found in Marseille was connected in any way to what police believe was a foiled attempt to carry out a terrorist attack in Paris last week involving a auto with several gas cylinders that was found abandoned near Paris’s Notre Dame cathedral, Nuñez added.
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Ornella G, 29, was charged with alleged involvement in a terrorist act and attempted murder.
Police on Thursday also arrested her alleged accomplice southeast of Paris – Ines Madani, 19, the daughter of the owner of the auto.
The probe took on a wider scope with the arrest of Sarah H. Investigators discovered she was to marry Larossi Abballa, the man who killed a police couple in June in their home in Magnanville, outside Paris, before being killed in a police raid.
Prosecutor Molins said the youngest of the three women, whose father owned the auto, had already been suspected by police of wanting to wage jihad for ISIS in Syria.
Sarah H.’s third and most recent fiancé was detained in the sweep as was Amel S.’s 15 year-old daughter, Mr. Molins said.
Molins said the use of a terrorist cell made up nearly entirely of young women represented a chilling turn in IS tactics, the New York Times reported.
Molins said Friday the investigation of the aborted attack has led to the dismantling of a “terrorist commando of young women” aligned with the Islamic State group.
Sarah H. had since become engaged to Adel Kermiche, one of two militants who killed an elderly priest in July near the northern city of Rouen and was subsequently slain by police.
Security is a key topic in the presidential elections in 2017.
Officials in France have been on high alert since a series of deadly attacks by Daesh in the country, including last November’s Paris attacks that left 130 people dead.
Valls said almost 15,000 people in France are being tracked because they are suspected of being in the process of radicalization, while 1,350 are under investigation for having links to terrorism.
A total of 238 people in France have been killed and hundreds wounded since January 2015 in a string of attacks attributed to, or fomented by, the IS group.
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Kudusov’s lawyer said he was a Chechen born in 1991 who had arrived in France as a child and had been placed under house arrest in 2012.
