Terror charge on two French girls for plotting attack

French authorities have handed two teenage girls preliminary terrorism charges for allegedly plotting an attack against a Parisian concert hall.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said on Saturday that the younger girl, who is 15, would remain in custody while her 17-year-old companion would be released under judicial supervision.

They were arrested on Wednesday by counter-terrorism agents as part of an investigation for criminal conspiracy in connection with a terrorist enterprise.

The investigation comes as France remains under a state of emergency and on high alert after Islamic State-linked extremists attacked the Bataclan concert hall and sites across Paris in November, killing 130.

Prosecutors said early investigations indicate the girls’ project appears to have been at an early stage because no weapons or explosives were found. The arrests came nearly four months after the deadly attacks at the Bataclan concert hall and other locations in Paris. A total of 130 people were killed in the French capital in the co-ordinated extremist attacks on Nov. 13. Just 10 months earlier, deadly jihadi attacks on a satirical newspaper and a kosher supermarket had pushed the country into high alert. 

In the last two years, a high percentage of the recruits for the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria coming from France have been girls.