French police were hunting on Thursday for possible accomplices to an Algerian whose plan to attack churches was foiled when his arsenal of weapons was uncovered purely by chance. Prime minister Manuel Valls said the planned attack on one or more churches in the town of Villejuif just south of Paris was the fifth to be thwarted since a jihadist killing spree in the capital left 17 dead in January.
“The threat has never been as high. We never faced this kind of terrorism in our history,” Valls told France Inter radio. Sid Ahmed Ghlam, 24, was arrested on Wednesday after police stumbled upon his plans when he called paramedics saying he had accidentally shot himself in the leg.
An arsenal of four Kalashnikov rifles, several handguns and bulletproof vests were discovered in his car and at his student flat as well as jihadist literature mentioning Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group. Detailed plans to carry out an attack were also found.
Police said his DNA was also linked to the murder of a young mother in Villejuif who was found shot dead in the passenger seat of her car on Sunday. They are now trying to untangle the complex web of events and find who else may have been behind the attack, how did Ghlam shoot himself in the leg and why did he kill young mother Aurelie Chatelain. Ghlam, a fresh-faced IT student with no criminal record, had previously drawn the attention of French intelligence agents over his postings on social networks expressing his desire to join jihadists fighting in Syria.
The revelations about a planned attack that again escaped the radar of French intelligence services have highlighted the danger for France which is often singled out by jihadists as a prime target.
France prevented five terrorist attacks in 2015
French PM Manuel Valls said on Thursday that five terrorist attacks had been foiled since the beginning the year, including the imminent church attack planned by Sayed Ahmed Ghlam, a young French-Algerian student arrested on Sunday in Paris. When asked during an interview with France Inter radio station about the number of attacks prevented in Paris since early January, Valls confirmed that it was five, including by Ghlam, Efe news agency reported. The premier said that the 24-year-old computer science student was ordered by another person to carry out an attack on one or more churches, and that since he was arrested for the murder of a young woman in the Parisian suburb of Villejuif, it was justifiable to specifically disclose his case. 1,773 French citizens or residents have links with jihadi recruitment networks, while 442 French nationals went to Syria or Iraq, 97 of whom died there.