France confirms ISIL’s links to five terror suspects

Group of four from Strasbourg and and a fifth man from Marseilles received encrypted communication from ISIL-held territory, prosecutor says.

A French policeman stands guard in front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on November 21, 2016, as the country remains on heightened alert following a string of terror attacks since lShow more

PARIS // Five men arrested in Frabce this week were planning a terror attack as early as next week and were receiving their orders from an ISIL member based in Iraq or Syria, French officials said on Friday.

The five were arrested on Sunday, four of them in the eastern city of Strasbourg, and one in the southern city of Marseilles.

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the Strasbourg “commando” of four was plotting an attack on December 1 but that investigators had not yet determined the specific target. Investigators found communications of GPS coordinates on one suspect’s USB stick.

Mr Molins said the five men “had common instructions to obtain weapons, instructions given by a person from the Iraqi-Syrian zone through encrypted applications popular among terrorists”.

The four arrested in Strasbourg were two French citizens both aged 37, a 36-year-old Franco-Tunisian and a 35-year-old Franco-Moroccan. Two of them had been convicted several times in France. The man arrested in Marseilles was a 46-year-old Moroccan. All were detained after a long-term investigation by French intelligence services.

The four Strasbourg suspects are long-time friends, seeing each other regularly, “all four communicating in a closed network through a dedicated telephone line,” Mr Molins said. But they were not in touch with the Marseilles suspect.

After being held in custody for five days, the five were moved at midday to the Paris court house and were to be presented later to counter-terrorism investigating judges. The Paris prosecutor asked magistrates to hand the five preliminary charges of taking part in a “terrorist criminal association” and to jail them.

The suspects were in possession or in search of weapons and financing, the prosecutor said. Among weapons seized during home searches in Strasbourg were two handguns, two automatic rifles, several cartridge clips and dozens of cartridges of different calibres.

On the USB key, investigators also found instructions for a money handover and detailed explanations to obtain weapons and ammunition.

A notebook containing manuscript inscriptions explicitly referred, over 12 pages, to armed jihad and death in martyrdom, while some excerpts openly mentioned Abubakr Al Baghdadi, ISIL’s leader, the prosecutor said.

Two of the Strasbourg suspects travelled to the Turkish-Syrian border via Cyprus in March last year, he said.

The Marseilles suspect left Morocco in 2013 and made several trips across Europe with fake ID documents. Turkish authorities prevented him entering the country last year.

Mr Molins was speaking to reporters a day after anti-terrorism authorities took the unusual step of holding the men in custody without charge beyond the normal maximum period, relying on a recent anti-terrorism measure.

France remains under a state of emergency imposed after ISIL attacks in Paris last November that killed 130 people

* Associated Press