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Mystery Surrounds Car With Gas Containers Found in Paris Near Notre Dame Mystery Surrounds Car With Gas Containers Found in Paris Near Notre Dame
(about 3 hours later)
PARIS — It was an ominous discovery, especially for a city so recently scarred by large-scale terrorism: a car full of gas cylinders, parked in the heart of Paris near the Notre Dame Cathedral. PARIS — It was an ominous discovery, especially for a city so recently scarred by large-scale terrorism: A car full of gas cylinders, parked in the heart of Paris near Notre Dame Cathedral.
It was a puzzling discovery, too. Four days after the car was spotted early on Sunday, the mystery surrounding it still swirls with unanswered questions. The biggest one: Was it connected to a terror plot? It was a puzzling discovery, too, and four days after the car was spotted early on Sunday, the mystery surrounding it still swirls with unanswered questions.
Some suggestive clues have emerged. The car was parked illegally in the middle of a small street with no license plates, and a notebook with Arabic writing was found inside, according to the mayor of the district where the car was found, the Fifth Arrondissement. The police said they were seeking at least one of the daughters of the car’s owner. She is thought to be a supporter of Islamist militancy, according to Agence France-Presse. But the biggest one — Was it connected to a terror plot? — appeared to have been answered late Thursday night with the arrest of three women.
But the car was not rigged as a bomb. The police found no detonator with the six gas cylinders. Amateur video footage showed the car parked with its hazard lights flashing. The district mayor said it sat that way for two hours before the police responded to a shopkeeper’s call about a suspicious vehicle. And the owner of the car, who was arrested on Tuesday, has since been released. Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, announced that the three women were “in all likelihood preparing new and, moreover, imminent violent actions.”
The police had four other people — two brothers and their girlfriends — in custody in connection with the case on Thursday, Agence France-Presse said, but nothing was publicly known about how they might be linked to the car. Mr. Cazeneuve described the women, ages 19, 23, and 39, as “radicalized” and “fanatics.” They were arrested on Thursday evening in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, a small town about 14 miles southeast of Paris.
All four are from the Loiret area of central France, the news agency reported; one couple was arrested Tuesday at a highway service area in southern France, and the other late Wednesday or early Thursday near the town of Montargis in Loiret. At least one of the women was carrying a knife and wounded a police officer in the shoulder during the arrest, Mr. Cazeneuve said. Other officers opened fire, wounding one of the women. The officer’s wound was not life threatening. Officials did not say which of the women was shot, or how seriously she was wounded.
The news agency said that the French intelligence services had flagged the couple arrested in Southern France as belonging to the “radical Islamist movement.” In praising the police, Mr. Cazeneuve called the operation a “real race against the clock.”
In a speech on Thursday, President François Hollande alluded to terrorist plots that had been thwarted in France, including some in recent days, but he did not elaborate. He said the fight against terrorism would be long and grueling, but “democracy will be stronger than barbarity.” That race started in the early hours of Sunday when people first noticed a Peugeot 607 sedan parked illegally, with no license plates, in the middle of a small street on the left bank of the Seine, in the Fifth Arrondissement, just across from the Île de la Cité, according to the mayor of the district.
The Paris prosecutor’s office, which handles terrorism investigations, did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the case. France is still under a state of emergency because of the terrorist threat, which Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, called “extremely high” on Wednesday. The car was found about a three-minute walk from Notre Dame Cathedral, and also close to Police Headquarters and the city’s main courthouse.
Fears of an attack on large crowds in cities or at big events have risen in France after the deadly episode in July in Nice, along France’s Mediterranean Sea coastline, where a Tunisian man killed 86 people by driving his truck through crowds gathered to watch Bastille Day fireworks. One of the women arrested on Thursday is a daughter of the car’s owner, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office. The owner of the vehicle was arrested on Tuesday, but has since been released.
In a letter to the Paris police prefect, the mayor of the Fifth Arrondissement, Florence Berthout, has called for an increase in police and military personnel to protect the thousands of students and tourists in the Latin Quarter that is part of the Fifth Arrondissement. The car was not rigged to explode. The police found no detonator with the six gas cylinders — an empty one in the back seat and five full ones in the trunk — although they did find three jerrycans of diesel fuel.
The discovery of the car so close to the Seine and to popular tourist sites reinforced concern in the country about the impact of fears of terrorist attacks on tourism. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Wednesday that tourism indirectly and directly accounted for 2 million jobs in France, but that “the attractiveness of France as a destination is nevertheless suffering from the consequences of the attacks in November 2015 and of July 2016,” especially in and around Paris. A notebook with Arabic writing in it was also found in the car, according to the prosecutor’s office, which did not elaborate.
The security forces in France have arrested more than 260 people this year “who were preparing, for a significant number of them, attacks or acts that could potentially cause tragedies,” Mr. Cazeneuve said on Wednesday. Amateur video footage showed the car parked with its hazard lights flashing. The district mayor said it sat that way for two hours before the police responded to a shopkeeper’s call about a suspicious vehicle.
French officials have expressed worries that militants sent by the Islamic State or inspired by its propaganda would change the tactics they use on French soil. Patrick Calvar, the head of the France’s domestic intelligence agency, said in May that he believed future Islamic State attacks would be carried out not with gunmen and suicide vests, but with car bombings and other explosive devices, as terrorist groups did in the 1980s and 1990s. Altogether, seven people are now in police custody in connection with the car. In addition to the three women arrested on Thursday, the police have arrested four other people from the Loiret area in central France — two brothers, ages 27 and 34, and their girlfriends, who are 26 and 29, according to the prosecutor’s office, which did not say how any of them might be linked to the Peugeot.
“As soon as they are able to bring explosives specialists onto our territory, they will be able to avoid sacrificing their fighters while also causing maximum damage,” Mr. Calvar told a parliamentary committee that was set up to examine the January and November terrorist attacks in France last year, which killed a combined 147 people. But all four are suspected of being “radical Islamists,” the prosecutor’s office said. One couple was arrested on Tuesday at a highway service area in southern France, and the other was arrested late Wednesday or early Thursday near the town of Montargis in Loiret.
Separately, Salah Abdeslam, one of the members of the team of Islamic State militants who carried out the November attacks in and around Paris, refused for a third time to answer the questions from a French judge during a hearing on Thursday, according to Mr. Abdeslam’s lawyer. Fears of an attack on large crowds in cities or at big events rose after a Tunisian man killed 86 people by driving a truck through crowds gathered to watch Bastille Day fireworks in Nice, France.
In a letter to the Paris Police prefect on Tuesday, the mayor of the Fifth Arrondissement, Florence Berthout, called for an increased presence of the police and military personnel to protect the thousands of students and tourists in the Latin Quarter, part of which is in the arrondissement.
The discovery of the car so close to the Seine and to popular tourist sites reinforced concern in the country about the effect of terrorism fears on tourism. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Wednesday that tourism indirectly and directly accounted for 2 million jobs in France, but that “the attractiveness of France as a destination is nevertheless suffering from the consequences of the attacks in November 2015 and of July 2016,” especially in and around Paris.
French officials have expressed concerns that militants sent by the Islamic State or inspired by its propaganda would change their tactics.
Patrick Calvar, the head of the France’s domestic intelligence agency, said in May that he believed future Islamic State attacks would be carried out not with gunmen and suicide vests, but with car bombings and other explosive devices.