French Terrorists Planned To Attack Anti-Semitism Event
Jihadists arrested last year in Lyon were planning to carry out a terrorist attack at a Jewish group’s conference about anti-Semitism, a French newspaper reported.
The five suspects who were arrested in a series of sweeps by French police between Sept. 16 and Sept. 18 were planning to strike on Sept. 18 at an event organized in Lyon by the regional branch of the CRIF umbrella of French Jewish communities and organizations, according to a report Tuesday in the Le Progres daily.
An unnamed police officer who is in charge of the investigation confirmed to the daily that the suspects were arrested following the interception of a Sept. 5 telephone conversation in which they discussed their plans.
Among the five arrested are Karim and Reda Bekhaled, brothers who are believed to have been involved in recruiting radical Muslims to fight in Syria, along with the remaining three suspects. Reda Bekhaled was heard discussing the plans in the recorded conversation.
The police officer said the brothers “had the ambition of dying as martyrs” and “planned to carry out imminently an act of violence.”
On Jan. 9, Amedy Coulibaly, another suspected jihadist, killed four people at a kosher supermarket outside Paris where he held 19 people hostage for several hours before police stormed the building and killed him. The attack was part of a string of terrorist acts committed by Coulibaly and two accomplices who on Jan. 7 murdered 12 at the offices of Charlie Hebdo weekly for its ridicule of Islam.
Coulibaly and the two brothers were part of a cell that also recruited jihadists to fight in Syria, French police said.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
