French police in the department of Drôme have arrested an 18-year-old they claim was plotting to carry out a terrorist attack over the weekend and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terror group.
The 18-year-old was arrested last Friday, then indicted in Paris on Tuesday and is believed to have been planning a terrorist attack over the weekend “in the name of the Islamic State organization to which he had pledged allegiance,” according to investigators.
Sources claim that the teen had drawn attention to himself recently and is believed to have been an imminent terrorist threat, with investigators believing that he intended to carry out a mass stabbing attack, targeting random people on the street, broadcaster BFMTV reports.
The teen, who comes from a Muslim family, is said to have become radicalised and a video of him pledging his allegiance to the Islamic State terror group was also found in his possession after he was arrested by police.
On Wednesday, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin commented on the indictment of the radical Islamist teen saying, “Thank you to the agents of the DGSI [General Directorate for Internal Security] who allowed the arrest of an individual who planned to commit an Islamist attack this weekend.”
While France has seen a significant number of radical Islamic terrorist attacks since the Charlie Hebdo attacks at the beginning of 2015, French authorities have claimed to have foiled at least 60 Islamist terrorist attacks as of November of last year.
While there were also five terror plots foiled that were not related to Islamic extremism in the same period, all of the 263 people murdered in terrorist acts were linked to radical Islam.
Radical Islamic terrorism remains a significant security threat in France, however, and anti-terror watchlists, such as the Terrorist Radicalisation Prevention Report Index (FSRPT), contain thousands of individuals. Over a thousand of those on the FSRPT list are illegal immigrants.