French tighten security after alert over Paris terror attack

SECURITY is to be tightened in France after allegations that a group of nine suspected Islamic militants arrested on Monday had been plotting a terrorist attack on a high-profile target in Paris.

The seven men and two women, who had been under observation by anti-terrorist investigators for two years, are suspected of planning an attack on the Metro, a Paris airport or the headquarters of the DST, the French domestic intelligence agency.

It is not clear if police were acting on intelligence of an imminent threat to national security when they carried out the arrests, but the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, warned yesterday that the risk of a terrorist attack was currently "at a very high level".

Mr Sarkozy used the news of the arrests to unveil a new anti-terror plan in which he pledged to increase the number of CCTV cameras on the streets, in airports, at train stations and near shops and banks.

Mobile phone operators and internet caf owners will have to keep records of all users and calls under the proposed new law.

Mr Sarkozy said: "Terrorists are using the internet in an extraordinary way. We will target internet cafs because we realise terrorists are going to these cafs because they have guaranteed anonymity there."

The internet and phone-record measures will have a three-year time limit and will need parliamentary approval to stay in force after 2008.

Under the proposed law, the authorities will be able to step up passport controls in cross-border trains and to photograph vehicle number plates and passengers at motorway toll stations. Mr Sarkozy said the aim was to boost intelligence-gathering resources considerably, "to listen to everything and, if possible, know everything".

The minister also revealed that about ten French citizens "are in Iraq, ready to become kamikazes" and that others were at religious schools in Pakistan.

Networks suspected of sending French militants to Iraq are being investigated. Among the militants to have left France is one aged only 14, Mr Sarkozy said.

Monday's arrests were made in the Eure and Yvelines regions outside Paris. Police believe the suspects are linked to the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), Algeria's largest outlawed rebel movement, which is aligned to al-Qaeda. It is said to have contacted al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in July about carrying out attacks in France.

According to reports in the French media, DST agents launched the raids after receiving a confidential note from the Algerian authorities summarising the questioning of a suspect arrested in Algiers this month. The suspect, known only as "MB", was an alleged group member who indicated that attacks were being planned in France. His wife was said to be among the nine arrested.

The GSPC's suspected leader, Saf Bourada, was convicted in 1998 for his role in a wave of terrorist bombings in France in 1995. He was released from prison in February 2003.