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WORLD NEWS Wednesday 19 april 2017
Official: French police thwart attack

days before election

matic rifle, two handguns, and intelligence services Islamic extremism has been
quantities of ammunitions for their religious radical- one of the main campaign
and three kilograms of ex- ism. They met in prison in topics for presidential can-
plosives as well as products 2015, Molins said. President didates. Candidates on the
and equipment to make Francois Hollande hailed right have been especially
explosives, Molins said. the “remarkable” arrests vocal, seeking to appeal
He said a flag of the IS and the work of police. to voters traumatized by Is-
Hooded elite police officers discuss during searches in Mar- group, a video camera, Agents from the French lamic State group-inspired
seille, southern France, Tuesday, April 18, 2017. Security con- six mobile phones, one domestic security agency, attacks that have killed at
cerns shook France’s presidential campaign Tuesday as author- laptop, a black hood, a backed by elite police least 235 people in France
ities announced arrests in a thwarted attack on the eve of the
vote, and candidates urged tougher counterterrorism efforts for mask and a wig were also units, conducted the ar- since January 2015, by far
a country already under a state of emergency. discovered. The two men rests. France’s fight against the largest casualty figure
(AP Photo/Claude Paris) were both known to police homegrown and overseas of any Western country.q
PARIS (AP) — French po-
lice thwarted an imminent
“terror attack” and ar-
rested two suspected radi-
cals Tuesday in the south-
ern port city of Marseille,
French authorities said
Tuesday, just days before
the first round of France’s
presidential election.
Paris prosecutor Francois
Molins said in a news con-
ference the two suspects
“were getting ready to
carry out an imminent, vio-
lent action on national ter-
ritory”.
He said at this stage, in-
vestigators have not de-
termined “the day, the
targets and the exact cir-
cumstances” of a poten-
tial attack.
France votes Sunday in
the first round of its two-
stage election. Extra safety
measures are being put in
place for the balloting af-
ter the extremist attacks
in the country that have
made security one of the
major issues of the presi-
dential campaign.
The suspects, Mahiedine
Merabet, 29 and Clement
Baur, 23, both French, were
detained under arrest war-
rants for terrorist criminal
association, according to
a police document ob-
tained by The Associated
Press.
Molins said Merabet had in
recent days tried to send a
video to the Islamic State
group to claim “allegiance
or responsibility” for a po-
tential attack.
Baur was signaled to au-
thorities by his family in
2015 as radicalized, with
the possible intention of
going to Syria. He had links
with Belgian jihadi net-
works, Molins said.
In their Marseille apartment
police found one auto-