Three men, aged 20 to 31, including two Afghans, were arrested Tuesday by the DGSI in the Toulouse region for a “violent action plan”.
The arrests took place as part of a preliminary investigation opened on September 27 for “terrorist criminal association with a view to preparing one or more crimes of attacks against people”, indicated the national anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office (Pnat) to AFP, confirming sources close to the matter.
The three men, two of whom are brothers, are aged 20 to 31, said the Pnat.
They were arrested at six o’clock in the morning in Toulouse and Fronton (Haute-Garonne) by investigators from the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI), supported by the Raid, as part of this investigation, added the one of the sources close to the case.
“They were preparing violent action on French territory,” said another close source, specifying that their arrest took place following the receipt of information.
The investigations are “beginning” and should in particular make it possible to clarify “the contours” of the “violent action project”, the Pnat further indicated.
Their custody can last up to 96 hours.
– Geopolitical context –
The last arrests for a planned violent action in France date back to the end of July.
Two young men, aged 18 and from Gironde, were indicted on July 27, suspected of having created a group on social networks “intended to recruit” people “motivated to carry out violent action” during the Olympic Games.
In total, three attacks were foiled during the Olympics period, according to the authorities. In addition to the two young people from Gironde, one of the projects targeted establishments, notably bars, around the Geoffroy-Guichard stadium in Saint-Etienne, and the other came from a group which had planned attacks against institutions and representatives of Israel in Paris. Five people were indicted, including a minor, in these cases.
The “jihadist threat represents 80% of the procedures” carried out by the Pnat, recalled anti-terrorism prosecutor Olivier Christen in mid-September. “In the first half of 2024, there were approximately three times as many procedures” of this type as over the same period in 2023, he added.
This increase is explained, according to him, by the “geopolitical context”, but also by “the reconfiguration, particularly in Afghanistan” of the Islamic State group.
In September, two attacks by the Islamic State group in Khorasan (IS-K), the regional branch of IS in Afghanistan, killed around twenty people in this country.
The deadliest attack by EI-K left 145 dead in March in a concert hall in Moscow.
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