Yesterday, on Wednesday, April 3rd, two 20-year-old Islamic extremists were indicted after they had planned to massacre kindergarteners and police in Paris.
Broadcaster RTL reported that both men were first arrested late last month on March 25th in Seine-et-Marne after a prosecutor in Paris charged them for plotting to slaughter innocent children and police officers.
One of the indicted Islamists is said to have been on the radar of France’s internal intelligence agency, the General Directorate of Homeland Security (DGSI).
The same man, who French authorities consider to be the mastermind behind the plot, admitted after his arrest that his plan was to enter into the kindergarten, murder children, and then take a number of them, hostage until security forces arrived, at which point he would then attempt to massacre police officers.
The suspect has lauded Mohamed Merah, an Islamic terrorist who was responsible for the Toulouse and Montauban shootings which targeted children, teachers, and French security forces at a Jewish school in 2012.
An individual who is close to the investigation communicated to RTL reporters that the primary suspect in the plot has ‘very strong psychiatric instability’, and has exhibited signs of narcissism, depression, and suicidal tendencies.
The General Directorate of Homeland Security had been watching the chief suspect since 2015 after had become progressively close to the extremist jihadi movement.
The suspect was arrested after it had become clear to authorities that the suspect was seeking to procure weapons for the plot.
Unfortunately, arrests like this aren’t unfamiliar to the French authorities in recent times. This case is just the latest in a series of recent terror plots that have been foiled by security forces.
During October of last year, Christophe Castaner, France’s Interior Minister, stated that authorities had been able to prevent at least five major terror attacks in 2018.
Earlier in 2019 in the city of Angers, another Islamic extremist was arrested by French authorities following an attempt to have a machine gun delivered to him in a package. It remains unknown whether the firearm was or wasn’t procured in connection with any terror plot.
French police will continue to have their work cut out for them for the foreseeable future as problems like these are unlikely to stop anytime soon. According to Minister of Justice Nicole Belloubet, by the end of 2019, approximately 50 Islamic terrorists and 450 radicalized Islamists could be set free from prison.
Unfortunately, because many of these terrorists are French ‘citizens’, authorities in France are unable to deport them to their Islamic homelands.
