Thread: France has 'at least 100 neighbourhoods' as bad as Belgium's jihadi hotspot Molenbeek

Daily Mail Online - UK - 29 March 2016 - From Julian Robinson

France has 'at least 100 neighbourhoods' as bad as Belgium's jihadi hotspot Molenbeek, warns minister as anti-terror police hunt eight suspects on the run after Brussels and Paris attacks

French minister claims there are scores of communities like Molenbeek

Belgian district was home to several extremists linked to attacks in Europe

Police are still hunting eight jihadis over the attacks in Brussels and Paris

Comes as Dutch police arrest a man in Rotterdam over links to terrorism

France has at least 100 neighbourhoods as bad as Belgium's jihadi hotspot Molenbeek, a prominent French politician has warned.

The minister for cities Patrick Kanner said there were scores of urban communities in France similar to the Brussels district, home to several extremists linked to terror activity in Europe.

It comes as it emerged that anti-terror police are still hunting eight suspects on the run after attacks in Brussels last week and in Paris in November.



France has at least 100 neighbourhoods as bad as Belgium's jihadi hotspot Molenbeek (pictured), a prominent
French politician has warned

Kanner sparked debate in France over the weekend when he claimed that 'around a hundred neighbourhoods' in France could be compared to Molenbeek, where Paris attack suspect Salah Abdeslam, his 'blood brother', Brahim, and the ringleader of the terror plot, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, once lived.

He said: 'We know that there are today around a hundred neighbourhoods in France which have potential similarities to what has happened in Molenbeek,' he said during a radio interview, though some in his own Socialist Party questioned the statement.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that European security agencies are still looking for eight people they say have connections with massacres in the French and Belgian capitals.

According to CNN, their names are included in an 11-page secret document passed to investigators around Europe in the wake of last week's attacks on Brussels, which claimed 35 lives.

CNN says it has been given the names of two of those on the list - Naim al-Hamed and Yoni Patric Mayne.



Naim al-Hamed (pictured) has been named on a list
of eight people still wanted over the attacks in Paris
and Brussels

Al-Hamed was named last week with investigators claiming he played a role in the Brussels bombings.

The 28-year-old was also suspected of involvement in the November 13 attacks in Paris which killed 130 people.

Belgian-Malian Mayne accompanied terror mastermind Abaaoud to Syria in 2014. Pictures later emerged purporting to show his dead body.

But his inclusion on the bulletin suggests investigators think his death may have been faked.

As part of the hunt for terror suspects, Dutch police yesterday arrested a 32-year-old French national in the port city of Rotterdam on suspicion of planning a terror attack, prosecutors said, in a raid carried out at the request of French authorities.

He is thought to have been planning an attack in France in the name of iSIS along with Reda Kriket, a terror suspect who was detained near Paris on Thursday, a French police source said.

'French authorities on Friday requested the arrest of this French national,' the Dutch prosecutor's office said in a statement, adding that the man was suspected 'of preparing a terrorist attack'.

The statement made no mention of any connection with the November attacks in Paris.

The detained French national is expected to be handed over to France 'shortly', the statement added, a process that could take 'several days', spokesman Wim de Bruin said.

Three other men were also detained in the police operations in Rotterdam Sunday, including two suspects of Algerian background aged 43 and 47. No immediate details were available about the third man.

The raids were carried out at two homes in the west of the city, and several nearby houses were evacuated 'for the safety of the residents'.

The Netherlands was already on heightened alert after Tuesday's airport and metro attacks in Brussels, with security stepped up at airports and train stations and border controls tightened.


French police said earlier they had foiled an attack by 34-year-old Kriket - a man previously convicted in Belgium in a terror case - after arresting him and discovering explosives and a machine gun at his home near Paris.

The French police source said the man arrested in the Netherlands was wanted by French authorities in December over criminal association with a terrorist organisation.

This morning, Belgium charged three more people with 'terrorist activities', prosecutors revealed.

Yesterday, Belgian police revealed they are questioning four new terror suspects after a series of dawn raids across the country.

A total of nine people were detained after operations in Brussels and the northern cities of Mechelen and Duffel. Five were released after questioning and four remain in custody.

The raids were linked to a 'federal case regarding terrorism', according to the federal prosecutor, but it was not clear whether they were tied to the attacks last week. Earlier another suspect was charged over his involvement with a terrorist group.




Tensions were running high as far-right football hooligans clashed with riot police in central Brussels yesterday

The man, identified as Abderamane A., was shot in the leg by police on Friday in the city's Schaerbeek district because he was carrying a rucksack police believed contained a bomb.

He was detained in connection to a related raid in France on Thursday that the government said foiled a 'major terrorist attack'. He has been charged with 'involvement in a terrorist group', Belgian prosecutors said today.

Abderamane A. was reportedly convicted in 2003 as an accomplice in the assassination of the Afghan political and military leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, two years earlier.

It came as dramatic pictures emerged of the moment armed Italian police arrested an Algerian man wanted by Belgium over fake ID documents used by the Paris and Brussels terrorists.

Djamal Eddine Ouali, 40, was seen on his knees and being held at gunpoint after being detained under a European arrest warrant in the southern Italian region of Salerno.

He was suspected of being part of a criminal network that produced fake documents for illegal immigration.

Later in the day, tensions boiled over in Brussels as a peace march aimed at paying tribute to those killed in the Brussels attacks, was invaded by a group of up to 500 far-right football hooligans.

Riot police were called in after the black-clad men gathered at Place de la Bourse in Brussels this afternoon and unfurled a banner denouncing ISIS. Police used a water cannon on the angry crowd.

In scenes that compounded a week of grief for Belgians, protesters calling themselves 'The Nation' were seen making Nazi salutes as they became embroiled in a heated argument with pro-migrant groups.

(...more)

What did they think was going to happen? We need to stop Obama NOW!

Put a hold on ALL immigration and all Student Visa's for the next 10 years. We need to put systems in place to track these people.

Send them all back. When they prove they can get along in the sandbox...then maybe they can join the rest of civilization...until then...no asylum, no refugees, no migrants from anywhere. Their whole family tree has violent terrorists in it.