French authorities late Tuesday released two of the seven suspects arrested in police raids at the weekend which broke up a terror ring plotting an attack.
Police swooped on Saturday night in the eastern city of Strasbourg and Marseille in the south following an investigation by security services lasting more than eight months.
They detained seven alleged plotters from France, Morocco and Afghanistan, foiling what Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve called “a long-planned terror attack on our soil.”
Two of those held in Marseille were freed on Tuesday. They were suspected of having helped shelter a Moroccan identified as Hicham E., who is still in custody, thought to be the group’s financer.
France is under a state of emergency that gives security forces enhanced powers to mount surveillance and launch raids, a year after the attacks by the so-called ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ (ISIL) terrorist group on Paris that left 130 people dead.
Source: AFP
