Counter-terrorism forces in southern France arrested four people on Friday in the Montpellier area, including a 16-year-old girl and men ages 20, 26 and 33, in what the Paris prosecutor’s office said was a suspected new terror plot.
French forces also uncovered a makeshift laboratory that contained approximately 70 grams of TATPm an explosive that can be made from materials that are readily available on the market. TATP is the bombing material used in the attacks by the Islamic State (ISIS/Da’esh) terrorist organization in Paris and in Brussels.
One week ago, French soldiers shot an Egyptian-born would-be attacker brandishing a machete outside the famed Louvre museum in central Paris, and yelling “ Allahu Akbar!” (“God is Great!” shouted in Arabic, is the traditional war cry of the radical Islamic jihadist.) The would-be terrorist was later identified by the Egyptian interior ministry as 28-year-old Abdullah Reda Refaie al-Hamahmy, a young man with a clean record and no history of political activism at all.
This week the Paris city council announced plans to install a bullet-proof glass barrier around the iconic Eiffel Tower, adding to the temporary fence that was placed around the world-renowned French landmark last June.
Meanwhile, the Tel Aviv-based Shurat HaDin legal rights organization is helping the families of two victims to file a suit against Twitter over the attacks. The suit is being filed on behalf of the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, 26, who was killed by ISIS in the Paris November 2015 terror attacks that killed 130, and the family of Alexander Pinczowski, 29, and his sister Sascha Pinczowski, 26, who were killed by an ISIS suicide bomber at the Brussels Airport in March 2016.
The lawsuit asserts that ISIS used Twitter “as a weapon of terror, including through ‘bots,’ special apps and ‘hashtag hijacking’ to inflate its image, recruit members and grow into the most-feared terrorist organization in the world.”