2 attack plotters arrested in France may have visited Syria

PARIS – Two suspects — one a school employee — arrested in an alleged attack plot on France apparently travelled briefly to Syria, two officials with knowledge of the case said on Wednesday.

Two others among the seven suspects arrested over the weekend have been freed, one official said.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Monday that the arrests in Strasbourg, in eastern France, and Marseille, in the south, culminated a more than eight-month investigation that he said thwarted a “terrorist action envisaged for a long time on our soil.” A series of arrests in June and the arrests this past Sunday put an end to the plot, Cazeneuve said.

The suspects are believed to have initially wanted to target the Euro 2016 European soccer tournament earlier this year. After arrests were made at the start of the tournament in June, the focus changed. Investigators exploiting a telephone found with one of the Strasbourg suspects has revealed numerous searches, including one of an amusement park, that could be of potential targets, the officials said, each adding that it was too early to speak with certainty. The officials were not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation and asked to remain anonymous.

Cazeneuve has said investigators are studying whether the alleged attack planning was part of a larger plot to attack multiple sites simultaneously.

The interior minister, meanwhile, on Wednesday presented a decree to dissolve an association that provides aid to inmates and families, especially those convicted on terrorism charges, but that, he maintains, also encourages radicalization and rallies those it oversees to the jihadi cause.

The move was among numerous steps, including closing radical mosques and expelling radical preachers, France is taking to try to draw down the terrorist threat. France remains under a state of emergency imposed after deadly Islamic State attacks on Paris last year. President Francois Hollande has said he wants the extraordinary measures prolonged until presidential elections next spring, a move that requires parliamentary approval.

The officials said that two of the four suspects arrested in Strasbourg, Yassine B. and Hicham M., both 38 years old and French, likely travelled to Syria in 2015, going first to Cyprus as if on vacation, then making what is suspected to have been a quick trip to Syria. Further information on the purpose of the journey was not immediately available.

The officials confirmed that Yassine B. worked in a Strasbourg school. It was not immediately known if he was a teacher or had other contact with children.

Only one of the suspects in the early Sunday arrests was known to authorities ahead of the sweep, a 26-year-old Moroccan arrested in Marseille. He lived legally in Aveiro, in northern Portugal, and had been flagged to European authorities as someone working in a terrorist group. Portuguese police said they had been watching him since 2015. Of the three men initially arrested in Marseille, he is the only one still jailed.

The June arrests involved people behind financing the alleged attack plot, while the Sunday arrests targeted the operational team. Both groups were under orders from unidentified commanders in Syria, one of the two officials said earlier this week. Four weapons were seized in the Strasbourg raids and there were indications the suspects were seeking more, the official said on Wednesday.

The Alsacien city of Strasbourg has been the focus of terrorism fears in the past, most recently in 2014 when authorities dismantled a jihadi network that included the brother of an Islamic State bomber who attacked the Bataclan concert hall in Paris a year ago. That network was based in the Neuhof and Meinau areas — sites of the Sunday raids. Strasbourg authorities were moving ahead with the opening this week of the city’s famed Christmas market — target of a failed extremist plot in 2000 by French and Algerians trained in Afghanistan.