The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office announced these arrests Friday evening in a press release. Those arrested are suspected of being “linked to the Islamist movement”.
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Five people were arrested in Meurthe-et-Moselle, Friday December 22, and placed in police custody by the intelligence services as part of an investigation opened for “criminal terrorist association”, declared the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat), confirming information from The Republican East . They are suspected “the preparation of one or more crimes of personal injury”.
“An arrest operation took place on instructions from the Pnat”, confirms the prosecution to France Télévisions. The arrests took place in Nancy, Toul and Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy, a source close to the case told franceinfo. “The police custody measures were taken as part of a preliminary investigation carried out by the head of a terrorist criminal association with a view to preparing one or more crimes of attacks against persons referred to in 1° of the article 421-1 of the Penal Code”he explains.
The anti-terrorist sub-directorate of the judicial police and the DGSI – French internal intelligence – were contacted. The Pnat specifies to franceinfo that these five people are suspected of being “linked to the Islamist movement”.
The Vigipirate device at its highest level
These arrests come as the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, called on Friday the prefects to “maintain extreme vigilance” on the occasion of the Christmas and Epiphany holidays, due to the “very high level of terrorist threat which continues to weigh”.
The minister made this reminder while France has activated since October 13 the emergency attack level of the Vigipirate system, the highest, following the murder of Dominique Bernard, a French teacher in a high school in Arras, stabbed by a radicalized former student.
