French Ministry of Interior says police foil advanced stage terror plot

Police in France foil an “advanced stage” terror plot following the arrest of a French national suspected of membership in a militant group at a Paris suburb, the interior minister says. Bernard Cazeneuve said in a televised address on Thursday night that the individual was arrested earlier in the day in Argenteuil, adding the arrest helped thwart a plot in France. “He was part of a terrorist network that planned to strike France,” the minister said. Cazeneuve said there was no “tangible evidence that links this plot to the attacks in Paris and Brussels” at the moment. 

This came after Belgian police arrested six people in Brussels as part of an investigation into the bomb attacks that hit the Brussels airport and a metro station on March 22. Nearly 35 people were killed. The attacks raised concerns among European Union countries about the EU security and its response to threats from Takfiri groups. The Daesh terrorist group, which claimed responsibility for Brussels attacks, was also behind bombings in the French capital last November that killed 130 people.

On Thursday, EU justice and home affairs ministers held an emergency meeting in Brussels, calling on the European parliament to work for a scheme to share strategic intelligence data. The ministers said the European states could not keep crucial information to themselves anymore. Officials say some states, including France and Germany, refuse to give their strategic data to other EU countries despite professed readiness to do so. "Sometimes there is a lack of political will, a lack of coordination and most importantly in some cases, a lack of trust," said EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos. "These horrendous attacks cannot continue to be wake-up calls for ever."