PARIS, March 30 (Reuters) – French authorities have arrested two more suspects on Monday over a foiled attack on Bank of \u200cAmerica’s Paris offices, bringing the total number of detained to \u200cfive, the country’s anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office said.<\/p>\n
The custody of the first three suspects, all \u200bof them minors of age and who were arrested on Saturday and Sunday, was extended, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The statement did not disclose any information on the identity of the two new suspects \u200cor on their links with \u2060the other three.<\/p>\n
Under French law, suspects in terrorism cases can be held in custody for up to 96 \u2060hours, with further extensions possible under judicial oversight.<\/p>\n
French police arrested one minor on the scene in the early hours of Saturday in Paris’ 8th \u200barrondissement after \u200ba patrol assigned to protecting sensitive \u200bsites spotted two individuals placing \u200cand attempting to ignite an improvised explosive device outside the bank. The other managed to escape.<\/p>\n
The device, though rudimentary, could have been lethal, and officers prevented it from being ignited, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said on Saturday.<\/p>\n
He added the individuals appeared to be “common-law” offenders acting as \u200cpaid intermediaries, in what he described as \u200ba known modus operandi involving proxies recruited \u200bto carry out such \u200battacks.<\/p>\n
He pointed at suspicions involving Iran as a possible \u200csponsor, though no conclusion has been \u200breached, he insisted. \u200bThe Iran embassy did not respond to messages seeking comment.<\/p>\n
Nunez said authorities had identified similarities with incidents in several European countries, \u200bincluding the Netherlands, Belgium, \u200cBritain and Norway, where improvised devices targeted sites linked to \u200bU.S. interests or Jewish communities.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Inti Landauro and Mathieu \u200bRosemain, Editing by Charlotte Van Campenhout)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS, March 30 (Reuters) – French authorities have arrested two more suspects on Monday over a foiled attack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[47,5,585,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-586","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-bank-of-america","9":"tag-france","10":"tag-improvised-explosive-device","11":"tag-laurent-nunez"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}