Three young men aged between 19 and 24 were arrested on Wednesday in the north of France on suspicion of planning a suicide bombing inspired by the attacks of November 13.
The suspects, from Lille and Dunkirk, were planning to blow themselves up in a public place in order to claim as many victims as possible. The alarm was triggered by a person close to them who was worried about an imminent attack. Investigators quickly identified a 19-year-old man who was born and lived in Dunkirk. He was already known to the territorial intelligence service because he had made threats against Mila, a critic of Islam, in 2020. According to RTL, he recently posed on social media with a fake weapon and gave a speech that was linked to the jihadist movement.
‘My client is not radicalised and does not advocate a jihadist thesis,’ his lawyer Réda Ghilaci told RTL, who doubts the criminal qualification and speaks of a ‘criminal offence that lacks legal thoroughness’.
During a search of his house, a homemade explosive belt with a detonator was discovered. This prototype was apparently intended to serve as a test for the manufacture of a real explosive belt. Investigators also confiscated a pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State and documents listing the ingredients for making TATP, a highly unstable homemade explosive favoured by jihadists.
According to a source close to the PNAT, an investigation was opened for ‘participation in a criminal terrorist organisation’ and ‘“failure to prevent” a crime or offence against the integrity of a person’. According to an article in Le Parisien, one of the three men considered to be the leader had expressed his desire on Snapchat to ‘drown the infidels in blood’ and glorified several attackers, including Khamzat Azimov, who was responsible for the knife attack in Paris in 2018.
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