Ten held in Swiss, French anti-terror operation

war on terror

A 23-year-old Colombian woman was arrested in Switzerland, while those arrested in France included two brothers who were known to have been radicalised.

Paris : Ten people were arrested in an anti-terror operation in France and Switzerland on Tuesday including a Swiss man linked to a foiled knife attack by a French teenager, sources close to the probe said.

A 27-year-old Swiss man arrested in France was in contact with a 14-year-old French boy who was “about to carry out the attack,” one of the sources said.

The teenager was arrested in the Paris region on June 20 and charged by an anti-terror judge, the sources said. A photo of the boy holding a paper vowing his allegiance to the Islamic State group was found on social media, they added.

The Swiss man was “particularly active on social networks… and he had contacts with individuals living in France with whom he notably discussed violent actions,” a judicial source said.

Nine suspects were arrested in southern France and the Paris region and were aged between 18 and 65, the sources said, adding that most were known to the authorities.

The suspects exchanged “disturbing remarks” on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, they said, adding that investigators were seeking to “determine what they were plotting”.

A 23-year-old Colombian woman was arrested in Switzerland, while those arrested in France included two brothers who were known to have been radicalised, the sources said.

Charlie Hebdo gets fresh death threats over Islam cartoon

paris: French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo has said it is pressing charges after receiving fresh death threats against staffers over a cartoon of the Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan who faces rape allegations.  The provocative magazine, which suffered a deadly jihadist attack in 2015 after publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, depicted Ramadan with a huge erection in its edition last Wednesday, saying: “I am the sixth pillar of Islam.” The Swiss academic, an Oxford professor and conservative Islamic intellectual in France, has been accused of rape by two women after the Harvey Weinstein scandal unleashed a wave of sexual abuse accusations worldwide.  Ramadan, 55, has furiously denied the accusations as a “campaign of lies launched by my adversaries”.  “Rape,” reads the caption on Charlie Hebdo’s cover. “The defence of Tariq Ramadan.” On Monday, the Paris prosecutor’s office opened a police enquiry into the death threat claim, a judicial source said.