On Friday, the government of France announced that authorities had thwarted a terrorist attack planned by a man of Egyptian origin; he and his brother were arrested. The brother was later released.
Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told BFM television that police had tracked and identified two young men “preparing to commit an attack with explosives or ricin.” Collomb also asserted that the men had tutorials on how to make poison using ricin.
Police raided the alleged terrorist’s residence on May 11 on suspicion he had links to criminal networks; he was placed under formal investigation four days later.
Collomb said the student possessed “instructions on how to build ricin-based poisons.”
Last Saturday night, a Chechen-born man, Khamzat Azimov, killed one person and wounded five others with a knife near the Paris Garnier Opera house. He was killed by police when he approached them as he yelled, “Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!”