Police in Belgium, France, and Germany make arrests in latest anti-terror raids

[Valin]

Fox News:

January 16, 2015

 

Dozens of terror suspects were arrested in Belgium, France, and Germany early Friday, a day after Belgian authorities said that they halted a plot to attack police officers by mere hours.

 

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Meanwhile, French police arrested at least 12 people in anti-terrorism raids in three towns around Paris, the city prosecutor's office said early Friday.

 

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Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported Friday morning that the Gare l'Est train station in Paris had been closed and evacuated due to a bomb threat. A police official, who was not authorized to be publicly named, told the AP that the station was closed "as a precaution," but would not give further details. The Gare l'Est is one of the major stations in Paris, serving cities in Eastern France and countries to the east.

 

Also Friday, Berlin police said that they had taken two men into custody on suspicion that they were recruiting fighters and procuring equipment and funding for the Islamic State group, better known as ISIS, in Syria.

 

The two were picked up in a series of raids involving the search of 11 residences by 250 police officers. Authorities said the raids were part of a months-long investigation into a small group of extremists based in Berlin. However, they also said there was no evidence the group was planning attacks inside Germany.

 

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[Valin]

Paris police arrest 12 linked to shootings, Kerry visits sites

Tom Heneghan and Arshad Mohammed

PARIS Fri Jan 16, 2015 9:08am EST

 

(Reuters) - French police arrested 12 people on Friday suspected of helping militant Islamist gunmen in last week's killings in Paris, where visiting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry laid wreaths at two main attack sites.

 

The arrests came after Belgian police killed two men and detained 13 suspects on Thursday in raids on an Islamist group prosecutors said was about to attack police there. Two related suspects were arrested in France and German police arrested two people after raiding 12 properties linked to radical Salafists. No link between any of them and the Paris attacks was confirmed.

 

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INVESTIGATIONS

Investigators are poring over the chain of events that led to three French nationals - two brothers with Algerian roots and a third of West African extraction - perpetrating the worst attacks in the country for decades.

 

In Belgium, a spokesman for state prosecutors said there was no apparent link between the two men killed during the shootout in the eastern city of Verviers and the Paris attacks.

 

Belgian investigators were also examining if a man detained in the city of Charleroi on suspicion of arms trafficking had any links with Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who killed four Jews at a kosher supermarket in Paris last week.

 

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About 200 Pakistani protesters clashed with police outside the French consulate in Karachi after a demonstration against Charlie Hebdo's front-page caricature of Prophet Mohammad.

[Valin]

4 Shot During Protest Against Charlie Hebdo in Pakistan

ZIA ur-REHMAN and SALMAN MASOOD

JAN. 16, 2015

 

KARACHI, Pakistan — Clashes between the police and protesters outside the French Consulate in Karachi on Friday left four people with gunshot wounds, two of them journalists, as demonstrations erupted across Pakistan against the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and its publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

 

The Karachi protest was led by the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest religious party. The demonstrators threw stones at riot police officers, who responded with tear gas, water cannons and gunfire.

 

Among those injured was a photographer for the Agence France-Presse news agency, Asif Hassan. He had been shot in the chest and was “out of danger” after emergency surgery, said Dr. Seemi Jamali, head of the emergency ward at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center. The agency said it was trying to determine whether Mr. Hassan had been specifically targeted.

 

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[Valin]

Belgians held in France after foiled plot 'were fleeing to Italy'

PARIS (AFP) - Two Belgians arrested in France after allegedly fleeing police raids against an Islamist cell in their home country were headed towards Italy, police sources said Friday.

The suspects left Belgium shortly after security forces launched an assault in the eastern Belgian town of Verviers on Thursday night which reportedly foiled a plot to carry out attacks against the police.

They were arrested in Chambery in eastern France as they were just about to cross into Italy, a police source told AFP.

"They were crossing the border at the exact moment that customs officers received the file from Belgium and were detained," a separate police source confirmed.

 

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[Valin]