In Saint-Etienne, a 35-year-old man was arrested on Saturday for making terrorist threats on social media. He has been formally charged and placed in pre-trial detention. Four other people were taken into custody in connection with the case before being released.
A video that could prove very costly for him. A 35-year-old man who said on social media that he wanted to die a martyr, while firing a gun into the air, has been placed under formal investigation and remanded in custody, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) said on Wednesday.
He is an Algerian national living in France illegally, AFP learned from a source close to the case. Previously unknown to police, he was arrested on Saturday afternoon in Saint-Etienne, where he had been living for several months in the working-class Beaubrun neighborhood, according to the same source. Five people had initially been taken into custody in this case, but the others were later released, PNAT said.
The investigation “made it possible to identify a 35-year-old man appearing in two videos circulated close together on social media, in which he referred on the one hand to his wish to die a martyr and on the other used a firearm, firing into the air in the street,” according to the anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office.
“Criminal terrorist conspiracy”
The suspect was formally charged with “criminal terrorist conspiracy,” PNAT said Wednesday evening. “My client disputes the allegations against him. A different legal classification would have been more appropriate,” his lawyer, Me Gianni De Georgi, told AFP. PNAT had opened an investigation on Friday, at the start of the Easter weekend, for “terrorist criminal conspiracy with a view to preparing one or more crimes against persons.”
The investigation, also concerning “possession of weapons, weapon components and Category B ammunition in connection with a terrorist undertaking,” had been entrusted to the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) and the National Directorate of the Judicial Police (DNPJ). A judicial investigation was opened on Wednesday on those same charges.
At the end of March, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez had asked prefects and police and gendarmerie chiefs to exercise “extreme vigilance” in securing places of worship during the Christian celebration of Easter and the Jewish holiday of Passover. For the moment, PNAT has not mentioned any place of worship that may have been targeted by this suspect. The Interior Minister had stressed that these holidays were taking place in a context of a “very clear resurgence of international tensions” and a “high” level of terrorist threat in France.
