One of the women arrested over a foiled terror attack in Paris had been engaged to a man who slit a priest’s throat, it has emerged. The women, aged 19, 23 and 39, were also linked to a recent planned attack at the Notre Dame cathedral last weekend after they left a auto packed with gas cylinders near the French landmark. No detonators were in the auto, discovered Sunday morning.
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Adel Kermiche attacked the elderly cleric while he was conducting a morning Mass in July.
She was the fiancee of Larossi Abballa, who killed a senior police officer and his partner at their home in a Paris suburb in June before himself being shot dead, Molins said.
During the arrest one of the women, identified as Sarah H., 23, stabbed a policeman in the shoulder who had been keeping watch on them from an unmarked auto near the apartment, the investigator said.
Police shot and wounded Ines M., who was the driver of the abandoned auto.
Speaking on the sidelines of Mediterranean states summit in Athens, French President Francois Hollande said “a terrorist attack has been thwarted”.
She is also known to police for attempting to join insurgents in Syria.
A letter pledging allegiance to IS was found in her handbag. The women shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the confrontation, Sky News reported.
In all, five women and two men, one with ties to Abballa, have been arrested in connection with the plot. But, he added, “there are often young girls, who are just as radicalized as the young men, and they also want the status of martyr, and they want to act”. Since then, authorities have worked frantically to untangle the relationships among the group and thwart what they increasingly feared was another plot.
Security around Paris was visibly higher Friday as the investigation widened.
French officials have been quoted in media reports as saying the three women now under arrest planned to attack the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris and another suburban station.
In a sign of fraying nerves, the son of a gas delivery driver was briefly detained because he had canisters in his vehicle.
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Explosive gas canisters filled with nails were the weapon used in bomb attacks by Algerian extremists on Paris in the 1990s.
