A 16-year-old French teenager of Chechen origin was indicted and placed in pre-trial detention last week for a planned jihadist-inspired terrorist attack in France. He was arrested near Le Mans.
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A source close to the matter confirmed on Tuesday, November 12, the arrest and custody last week of a 16-year-old minor, from the west of France, for a planned violent action in the territory.
The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) confirmed to our colleagues at AFP the opening of a judicial investigation on Friday November 8 for “terrorist criminal association with the aim of committing crimes against persons”.
The teenager, born in 2008, “was indicted on this charge and placed in pre-trial detention”, added the Pnat, refusing to communicate more details on the motivations for this action project, nor on its progress at the time of the arrest.
Le Figaro indicated Tuesday evening that the suspect was French of Chechen origin and that his project was jihadist-inspired, which was confirmed by the source close to the matter.
The daily also indicated that the suspect had been arrested on the outskirts of Le Mans and that he had carried out searches on different places which could be considered targets, including a synagogue in Le Mans.
The source close to the matter declined to comment.
Thursday, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau spoke of a foiled attack “some time ago” what would have tried to commit “a very dangerous individual about to act”.
The various actors in the fight against terrorism in France regularly warn of the increase in the number of minors implicated in 2023 and 2024 in France in cases of terrorism of a radical Islamist nature.
It is “a phenomenon (…) relatively new” and in “very strong increase”said anti-terrorism prosecutor Olivier Christen in mid-July.
“We have 14 minors who have been indicted since the start of the year when there have been 15 over the whole of 2023” et “two to three per year” before, he observed at that moment.
These minors implicated “have signed up for projects which are beginning to be very constructed of taking action either alone (…), or in conjunction with others” people, he assured.
Since 2018, several cases of terrorism, including three attacks, have also involved jihadists in France from Russian republics in the North Caucasus, mainly from Chechnya.
The knife attack in the Opera district of the capital in May 2018 by Khamzat Azimov, the assassination in Yvelines of Samuel Paty in October 2020 by Abdoullakh Anzorov, currently tried by the special assize court in Paris, and, on October 13, 2023, that of Dominique Bernard in Arras (North) by Mohammed Mogouchkov have the common point of having been committed by young people radicalized from this region.
The last arrests for a planned violent action in France date back to mid-October.
A 22-year-old Afghan, committed to the ideology of the Islamic State according to the anti-terrorism prosecution, was indicted and then imprisoned, suspected of having “fomented” a “project of violent action” in a football stadium or shopping center.
During the period of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, three attacks were foiled, according to the authorities.
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) perpetrate violent action” during the Olympics.
Another project targeted establishments, notably bars, around the Geoffroy-Guichard stadium in Saint-Etienne, while a third emanated from a group which had planned attacks against institutions and representatives of Israel in Paris.
Five people were indicted, including a minor teenager, in these cases.
The “jihadist threat represents 80% of procedures” carried out by the Pnat, recalled prosecutor Christen in mid-September.
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