France shuts down three mosques in state of emergency crackdown
Source: usatoday.com
French officers of the gendarmery guard the entrance of the Great Mosque of Paris on Nov. 14, one day after a terrorist attack in Paris. On Dec. 2, police shut down 3 mosques in Paris suburbs for what authorities said was a 'pattern or radicalization.'
French authorities have shut down three mosques for an alleged "pattern of radicalization," including one raided by police at dawn Wednesday in eastern Paris, the French interior minister said.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazaneuve said a "large police contingent" closed one mosque in Lagny-sur- Marne, a suburb in eastern Paris, placing nine "radicalized individuals" under house arrest and barring another 22 from leaving the country.
The raid was conducted under the terms of a prolonged state of emergency instituted after the terrorist attacks on Nov. 13 in Paris that left 130 people dead. Islamic State extremists claimed responsibility for the attacks.
The state of emergency, which was passed by parliament, is in effect until February and allows authorities wide latitude in making searches, arrests and in banning public gatherings.
Cazaneuve defended such tough measures by saying, "it is the terrorism that is the threat to freedom not the state of emergency."
In Wednesday's raid police also confiscated a 9 mm handgun, a computer hard drive hidden behind a wall and jihadist propaganda. In addition, Cazaneuve told reporters, police discovered documents about an unregistered Koranic school.
Two other mosques, one in Gennevilliers, in the northwest suburbs, and one in Lyon, were also closed within the past week. The interior minister referred to the three mosques as "pseudo religious associations."
The Lagny mosque was set up in 2010 and run by Mohamed Hammoumi, who was described as a 34-year-old "radicalized Islamist," according to French TV station iTélé.
Hammoumi fled to Egypt earlier this year, but French legal documents issued by authorities in April to freeze his assets, alleged that he "propagated a radical ideology ... .and openly supported armed jihad." The documents, also claimed that a dozen of his students had joined either Islamic State or the al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra front. It said three of the students had been arrested in connection with the investigation into the grenade thrown into a kosher grocery in Paris in 2012.
French Interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve leaves after attending the weekly government cabinet meeting at the Elysee presidential palace in Paris on Dec. 2, 2015.
The interior minister also said French authorities have conducted 2,235 searches, made 263 arrests and seized 334 weapons along with 34 military-grade weapons since the attacks last month on several bars and restaurants in Paris as well as a concert hall and the national stadium.
Most of the 130 victims of died at the Bataclan theater, where gunmen shot concertgoers before blowing themselves up with suicide bombs.
Seven of the terrorists died in the killing spree. The apparent ringleader, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was killed along with two other people by police on a raid on an apartment in northern Paris five days after the attacks.
Authorities are still looking for Salah Abdeslam, 26, a friend of Abaaoud's who is suspected of participating in the killings. Authorities said Abdeslam was apparently picked up in Paris afterward by friends from a Brussels suburb where several of the terrorists lived.
More than 90 per cent of adults support the government's call for a prolonged state of emergency, according to an IFOP poll taken after the attacks. But rights groups and some politicians have recently voiced concern about reports of police abuses, according to France 24.
Source: usatoday.com
