PARIS – AFP – A French prosecutor said Thursday he would pursue charges of attempted murder and terrorism against seven of the 12 suspected Islamist extremists arrested at the weekend.
Francois Molins, the Paris prosecutor, said the seven had been part of an “active terrorist cell” that posed the biggest threat France had faced since the mid-1990s, when the Algerian-based GIA was dismantled.
The attempted murder charges relate to a grenade attack on a Jewish grocery store in the Paris suburbs last month. The attack left one person slightly injured but Molins said the Yugoslav-made grenade had been capable of seriously injuring anyone within a 10-metre radius, indicating the consequences could easily have been much worse.
The prosecutor added that the profile of the suspects detained in custody was “much more dangerous than we initially assumed” and said the investigation had established they were planning to go on “jihad” in Syria and other countries.
