French police release 5 terror suspects

PanARMENIAN.Net - Police in France have released five of the 12 terror suspects detained over the weekend in a nation-wide police operation connected with an investigation into a grenade attack on a Jewish shop in Paris, officials said on Thursday, Oct 11, RTT News reported.

The Paris prosecutor's office said in a statement that the remaining seven continued to be in custody. They are now expected to appear in court in the coming days.

All the 12 were detained in a nationwide counter-terrorism operation aimed at capturing suspects in a bomb attack on a kosher food shop in the northern Paris suburb of Sarcelles on September 19. That attack triggered widespread outrage after it emerged that radical Islamists were targeting the Jewish community in Sarcelles.

Following the detention of the 12 suspects, French police unearthed bomb-making materials and weapons hidden in a parking lot in an eastern Paris suburb on Wednesday during an investigation into what they said a "dangerous" Islamist network.

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said later that the discovery of the cache, consisting of a shotgun, a revolver, bags of potassium nitrate, sulfur and a pressure cooker, was linked to the arrest of a dozen terror suspects over the weekend.