Arrested terror suspects plotting attack: France

MOSCOW: Five terror suspects arrested in Paris this week are suspected of conspiring to launch an attack in France and one of them was prepared to die, Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said on Wednesday.

France is on heightened alert for a terror attack after al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden targeted the country for the first time in a recent speech and endorsed the capture of five French nationals by the group’s North African wing.

Hortefeux said the terror threat remained “real” and “elevated” following the arrest on Monday and Tuesday of five suspects, all of whom were French including one woman, at Charles de Gaulle airport and in the greater Paris region.

“What we can say is that, over the last few days with these arrests ... there was what we call a conspiracy (to) prepare a terror attack,” he told reporters at a Paris train station.

“Some of them were ready to die in their fanatical act,” he said, later clarifying only one appeared willing to die.

The Eiffel Tower and surrounding area was evacuated in late September and again shortly after that.

Security officials have tightened their surveillance of potential targets such as airports and train stations since September, when police received a tip-off that a female suicide bomber was preparing to attack the Paris metro system.

While the tip-off did not result in an arrest, Hortefeux has kept up a steady drumbeat of warnings about a possible attack, recently citing information from Saudi Arabia that al Qaeda was plotting to strike in France.

“It’s a real and permanent threat,” said Alain Chouet former chief of the DGSE, France’s foreign intelligence service. “When we have 5 million Muslims in the country ... if we have 1 in 10,000 that decides to turn to violence that makes for a healthy reservoir.”