Two of the suspects were placed under surveillance before being arrested. They visited the Strasbourg Christmas market on December 2.
Among the five men arrested this Friday, December 22 as part of an anti-terrorist operation in Meurthe-et-Moselle, two had been placed under surveillance. The territorial intelligence services and the territorial direction of the judicial police followed these two suspects to the Strasbourg Christmas market on December 2. But the investigation began several weeks before: the intelligence services spotted a worrying comment on social networks. Under photos of Christmas markets, published by a Muslim association on Facebook, one of the suspects writes a vindictive message. The author of this comment: a student living in Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy. It was then that the placement under surveillance began, before two searches carried out at the homes of two students, including the author of the message, on December 9. Investigators reportedly found a video of the Strasbourg Christmas market in which they heard: “and there we shoot”.
Four of five suspects released
An investigation was opened for criminal terrorist association, in order to “verify whether there was a terrorist project, what its state of completion was and the target(s), if applicable”, detail the authorities. Among the five people arrested and aged between 20 and 23, four were released on Saturday evening, according to a police source. The custody of the fifth person was extended, in the premises of the DGSI in Levallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine). According to information from Le Parisien, one of the suspects belonged to the Salafist movement, and all of them visited Strasbourg. Friday December 21, the day of the arrests, Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, called on the prefects to “maintain extreme vigilance”, due to the “high level of the terrorist threat which continues to weigh”. As a reminder, an attack had already left five dead and around ten injured at the Strasbourg Christmas market in 2018.