(MENAFN- Gulf Times) France yesterday arrested five Russians accused of plotting a new attack as four men suspected of helping the gunmen behind the Paris shootings were brought before anti-terrorist judge.
European nations, on high alert after the attacks that shook France to its core, have launched a wave of raids targeting suspected jihadist cells.
French prosecutors said five Russians from the restive Muslim republic of Chechnya had been detained near the southern city of Montpellier suspected of plotting an attack. No further details about their plans were immediately available.
Meanwhile, prosecutors have called for charges against four men suspected of helping supply weapons and vehicles to the Islamist gunmen who killed 17 people in three days of carnage around Paris.
The four, who are appearing before a anti-terrorist judge, would be the first to face charges over the January 7-9 attacks, the worst in France in decades.
There has been a flurry of activity by police and prosecutors across a jittery Europe, including raids by some 200 German police hunting a jihadist network they believed was planning an attack in Syria.
The Germans yesterday searched 13 apartments in Berlin and other locations, seeking people linked to the alleged leader and financier of the group who had been detained on Friday.
Greece also ordered the extradition of a 33-year-old Algerian man with suspected links to yet another jihadist cell dismantled by Belgian security forces last week over claims it was plotting to kill police officers.
The suspected mastermind of the plot, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 27-year-old Belgian of Moroccan descent, remains at large. And in Bulgaria, a court ruled that a Frenchman who knew two of the Paris attackers should be returned to his home country.
France had issued an arrest warrant for Muslim convert Fritz-Joly Joachin, 29, who denies being an extremist but was detained after trying to cross from Bulgaria into Turkey before the attacks.
Joachin, of Haitian origin, has admitted to being "old friends" with the Kouachi brothers.
Last week he said he used to play football with the brothers and had a "business connection" selling clothes but denied knowing about their plans to launch an Islamist attack.
Judge Stratimir Dimitrov told the court in Bulgaria that Joachin "will remain under arrest until his final transfer to the French authorities" and that "the ruling is final".
His lawyer Radi Radev told journalists that he expects that the extradition would take place "without any delay. Maybe within 24 hours."
Joachin was again brought to court by several policemen and in handcuffs. He told AFP after the hearing: "Yes, I am happy to be returning to France." Asked if he was afraid that he might be convicted, he shook his head and said: "No".
The attacks in Paris on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket and police officers triggered global outrage and fears of a resurgence of Islamist attacks in Europe.
A Muslim employee in the Jewish supermarket, who was hailed as a hero for trying to save customers during the attack in which four people were killed, yesterday gained French citizenship.
About 273,000 people had signed a petition calling for France to naturalise Lassana Bathily, 24, from Mali.
The attacks have forced France to face up to its failure to integrate poorer, migrant families, with Prime Minister Manuel Valls admitting yesterday that the country suffered "social and ethnic apartheid".
He also sought to douse the anger sweeping many Muslim countries after Charlie Hebdo once again published an offensive cartoon on its cover.
President Francois Hollande insisted his country "insults no one when we defend our ideas, when we proclaim freedom".
But Valls sought to nuance the message, saying "'Je suis Charlie' is not our only message to the world.
"France carries freedom of expression everywhere, but it also defends other values it holds dear: peace, respect for beliefs, dialogue between religions," he said.
His words followed giant anti-Charlie Hebdo marches in a number of countries.
Europe has seen its own rallies, with anti-Islamic groups and anti-racist groups trying to out-number each other.
The Danish wing of Germany's anti-Islamic Pegida movement staged its first rallies on Monday night, drawing several hundred people in the capital and other cities, but was outnumbered by counter-demonstrators.
In Germany, too, more than 17,000 anti-racism demonstrators took to the streets across the country on Monday in opposition to Pegida, which had been forced to cancel its own rally following a terrorist threat.
Belgian 'mastermind' shamed family, insists his father
The father of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the alleged mastermind of a foiled Islamist plot in Belgium, says his son has shamed the family and destroyed their lives.
"Why in the name of God, would he want to kill innocent Belgians? Our family owes everything to this country," Omar Abaaoud, whose family moved to Belgium 40 years ago from Morocco, told yesterday's La Derniere Heure newspaper.
"We had a wonderful life, yes, even a fantastic life here. Abdelhamid was not a difficult child and became a good businessman," the father was quoted as saying.
"But suddenly he left for Syria. I wondered every day how he became radicalised to this point. I never got an answer," said the father of six children who lives in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, a working class neighbourhood of Brussels.
"Abdelhamid has brought shame on our family. Our lives have been destroyed," he said.
Belgium's Flemish-language VTM channel reported that Abaaoud had made calls from Greece to the brother of one of the two heavily-armed suspects killed in Verviers.
According to Belgian media, Abaaoud spent time fighting alongside the Islamic State group in Syria.
He was already known to security forces after appearing in an Islamic State video at the wheel of a car transporting mutilated bodies to a mass grave.
In 2014, Abelhamid convinced his younger brother Younes, then 13 years old, to join him in Syria.
"He got himself recruited by Abdelhamid and for that I will never forgive Abdelhamid," the father told La Derniere Heure.
"Do I still consider Abdelhamid my son? It's a very difficult question. Perhaps the response is the following: I never want to see him again. But I hope in return that he makes it so that Younes returns safe and sound," he said.
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