French police arrest teenage girls suspected of plotting attack
PARIS - Two teenage girls suspected of plotting to attack a Parisian concert hall have been arrested and presented to an anti-terrorism judge, Paris prosecutors said Friday.
The Paris prosecutors' office confirmed in a message to the AP that the girls, aged 15 and 17, were arrested Wednesday by counterterrorism agents as part of an investigation for criminal conspiracy in connection with a terrorist enterprise that had been opened a day before.
France's BFMTV channel first reported the news.
Both girls are now facing preliminary charges of criminal association linked to terrorism, prosecutors said.
No details about where the teenagers live, their identities, or where the arrests were made have been given.
Prosecutors said early investigations indicate the girls' project appears to have still been in the thinking stage as no weapon or explosives were found. They have requested that the youngest girl be placed in temporary custody and the other under judicial control.
The arrests came nearly four months after the deadly attacks at the Bataclan concert hall and other locations in Paris. A total of 130 people were killed in the French capital in the coordinated extremist attacks on Nov. 13.
Just 10 months earlier, deadly jihadi attacks on a satirical newspaper and a kosher supermarket had pushed the country into high alert.
In the last two years, a high percentage of the recruits for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) coming from France have been girls.
A top Obama administration official said last month the number of foreign fighters joining ISIS in Syria and Iraq has dropped to about 25,000 from a peak of 35,000.