Paris (AFP) – Three men with suspected links to jihadist Larossi Abballa, who killed a police officer and his partner outside Paris last week, were arrested Tuesday on suspicion of spying on other police officers, police sources said.
The three were arrested in the Paris suburbs of Mureaux and Mantes-la-Jolie, home of Abballa who was shot dead by police after killing the couple at their home on June 13.
One of the three suspects is on France’s national security watchlist.
They are suspected of spying on a police event in the Yvelines region west of Paris, one of the police sources said.
Investigators are examining whether they had any connection to the twin killing of police officer Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and civil police employee Jessica Schneider at their home in Magnanville, also in Yvelines.
Abballa, 25, killed Salvaing before taking Schneider hostage and slitting her throat. Her three-year-old son who was in the house was was traumatised but unharmed.
The convicted radical claimed allegiance to the Islamic State group in a live Facebook video and urged fellow jihadists to carry out more bloodshed.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said police had found a hit list at the scene of the attack naming police, rappers and journalists.
Two other men linked to Abballa were charged and detained by an anti-terror court on Saturday.
Saad Rajraji, 27, and Charaf-Din Aberouz, 29, were charged with having links to a terrorist group, but were not found to have any connection to the murder of the police couple.
The two men had been convicted along with Abballa in September 2013 as part of a network to send jihadists to Pakistan, sources close to the investigation said.
The attack was the first in France since a group of Islamic State gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris in November 2015.
Read more on the Islamist murder of two French police officers on Breitbart London
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