Paris – French authorities arrested three suspects on Tuesday linked to the Paris terrorist attacks. A man and a woman are under arrest for January’s deadly assault in a kosher grocery store in Vincennes, a Paris suburb. Separately, Reuters reported that a 29-year-old man is believed to have been part of the November 13th massacre in the French capital that left 130 fatal victims.
The man and the woman connected to the attack at the kosher market have been identified as Claude Hermant and his wife, both accused of participating in arms trafficking. January 9, a few days after the terrorist attack at the Paris office of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in hands of two Islamic State militants, another terror-related incident happened at the kosher grocery Hyper Cacher, when Amedy Coulibaly killed a policewoman and four other people, also taking others hostage before he was killed by security officers.
French media reports have identified Hermant as a recognized figure in far-right circles, especially in the northern city of Lille. He was a former soldier who has records of having been involved in the anti-immigration National Front political party. As for his wife, she is thought to be the manager of a company that provided weapons for Coulibaly, even though there is no evidence of a direct relation between him and the couple.
France is still in top security alert since the Nov. 13 massacre, the deadliest attack on French territory since World War II. Eight shooters and suicide bombers killed 130 people at cafes, restaurants, a concert venue and near the Stade de France national sports stadium.
Seven assailants died on Nov. 13 and other eight ISIS militants involved in the attacks were killed in police raids days later. However, French authorities are still searching for Salah Abdeslam, another chief suspect who disappeared as he escaped to Belgium. A massive international manhunt has been declared to capture him.
Apart from the extremists, a schoolteacher who said he had been stabbed with a knife-like weapon by an ISIS supporter, was hospitalized on Monday and is being interviewed after he admitted he had faked the story, according to prosecutors. The teacher’s made up incident led to classes’ cancellation and an anti-terrorism investigation.
ISIS recently published a statement through which it denounced the French school system of promoting “the evils of secular learning, music, and drawing” and asked readers to urgently kill teachers. Islamic State, the jihadist terror group in control of large regions of Syria and Iraq, is now the target of air strikes led by a U.S. coalition that includes France.
Source: CNN