Morocco's General Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DGST) provided Paris with information on a terrorist suspect planning an attack at a French church, which allowed French security services to intercept the plotter, the MAP news agency reported on Tuesday, citing the DGST
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th April, 2021) Morocco's General Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DGST) provided Paris with information on a terrorist suspect planning an attack at a French church, which allowed French security services to intercept the plotter, the MAP news agency reported on Tuesday, citing the DGST.
According to the agency, the intelligence service handed over the suspect's personal data and details of the plan on April 1. A subsequent operation to neutralize the suspect and prevent the attack was carried out on April 3-4.
According to the data provided by the DGST, the suspect, a French national of Moroccan descent, regularly watched digital materials of a violent nature spread by the Islamic State terrorist group (banned in Russia) and was planning to use a sword to kill churchgoers.
The service also noted that several others were arrested during the operation and that the failed attacker planned a suicide act in coordination with IS.
This past Sunday, Le Point reported that the national General Directorate for Internal Security arrested five women in the Beziers town in southern France. They are believed to have been radicalized and planning a terror act in the city of Montpellier.
France has been on particularly high alert regarding the Islamist threat since October 2020, when two consecutive terrorist attacks occurred in the country. The brutal beheading of a teacher at the hands of a teenage extremist took place in Paris on October 16, and a knife-stabbing which claimed three lives in a church in Nice on October 29.
