The presumed gunman who killed four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels last May reportedly plotted another terror attack for 14 July when France celebrates its national holiday.
Based on the testimony of four French reporters who were kidnapped by the Islamic State in Syria and held captive by Mehdi Nemmouche, the newspaper 'Libération' reported that the returned jihadist fighter Nemmouche planned “at least one attack in France, in the heart of Paris, which would be at least five times bigger than the attacks in Toulouse.” The attack would allegedly have taken place on Paris’s iconic Champs Elysées avenue.
Mehdi Nemmouche, who was extradited to Belgium over the 24 May 2014 terror attack in Brussels was identified this weekend by a French journalist as being among his Islamic extremist captors in Syria. Writing on the website of his former employer, the news magazine 'Le Point', Nicolas Hénin said the 29-year-old Nemmouche was his feared and violent jailer between July and December 2013.
Hénin, one of a group of four journalist hostages freed in April, said Nemmouche was a dreaded figure. “When Nemmouche was not singing, he was torturing,” wrote Henin in an article published on Saturday. “He was part of a small group of Frenchmen whose visits would terrify the 50-odd Syrian prisoners held in the cells nearby. Every night the blows would start raining down in the room, where I was also interrogated. The torture lasted all night, until dawn prayers.”
Nemmouche is slated to appear on September 12 before a Brussels judge who will decide whether to extend his preventive detention. He has been sentenced seven times in France, including for armed robbery, and has spent seven years in jail, where he was found proselytizing Islam.
Experts puts the number of Europeans who have fought in Iraq and Syria or are still fighting there at over 3,000.
