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French police arrest two over deadly Marseille train station attack

French police investigating the fatal stabbing of two young women in the southern city of Marseille, an attack claimed by Islamic State, have arrested two men, a judicial source said Wednesday.

Published: 12 October 2017 08:50 CEST

French police arrest two over deadly Marseille train station attack

Photo: AFP

The pair, aged 24 and 29, were arrested on Tuesday in Toulon, about 65 kilometres (40 miles) east of Marseille.

Ahmed Hanachi, a 29-year-old Tunisian, fatally stabbed the two women at Marseille's Saint-Charles train station on October 1, before being shot dead by police.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility, but French investigators have not found any evidence linking the attack to the jihadists.

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Photo: AFP

A judicial source said of the arrests: “The 24-year-old man may have hosted the killer Ahmed Hanachi during one of his visits to Toulon.”

The source added the suspects were together when they were arrested.

Police have focused their investigation on Hanachi's family, arresting four of his siblings in the days following the attack. Two have been freed.

The other two siblings, brothers Anouar and Anis, await extradition after their arrests in Switzerland and Italy, respectively.

French investigators suspect Anis of complicity in the Marseille attack.

Described as a former jihadist fighter in the Iraqi-Syrian area, he is expected to be extradited to France.

According to the head of Italian anti-terrorism Lamberto Giannini, French investigators are looking into whether Anis “indoctrinated his brother Ahmed and caused his radicalisation”.

The second-youngest of five siblings, the attacker was not known to attend any mosque.

But he was known to the police for drug as well as alcohol problems and had a history of petty crime, using seven aliases. He was not on a jihadist watch list.

Two days before the attack, he was arrested for shoplifting in the eastern city of Lyon but was allowed to walk free the following day — a decision the government's inspectorate general (IGA) said revealed “serious faults” in the system around dealing with foreigners whose papers are not in order.

US vice president lays wreaths at site of 2015 Paris terror attacks

US Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff lay flowers after ceremonies at Le Carillon bar and Le Petit Cambodge restaurant, at which 130 people were killed during the 2015 Paris terror attacks. Photo: Sarahbeth Maney/POOL/AFP

The attacks by three separate teams of Islamic State group jihadists on the night of November 13, 2015 were the worst in France since World War II.

Gunmen mowed down 129 people in front of cafes and at a concert hall in the capital, while a bus driver was killed after suicide bombers blew themselves up at the gates of the stadium in its suburbs.

Harris, wrapping up a four-day trip to France, placed a bouquet of white flowers in front of a plaque honouring the victims outside a Paris cafe.

Castex attended a minute of silence at the Stade de France football stadium, along with Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, before laying wreaths at the sites of the other attacks inside Paris.

In front of the Bataclan concert hall, survivors and relatives of the victims listened to someone read out the names of each of the 90 people killed during a concert there six years ago.

Public commemorations of the tragedy were called off last year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Last year we weren’t allowed to come and we all found it really tough,” said Bruno Poncet, who made it out alive of the Bataclan.

But he said the start of a trial over the attacks in September meant that those attending the commemoration this year felt more united.

‘Overcome it all’

“We’ve really bonded thanks to the trial,” he said. “During previous commemorations, we’d spot each other from afar without really daring to speak to each other. We were really shy. But standing up in court has really changed everything.”

The marathon trial, the biggest in France’s modern legal history, is expected to last until May 2022.

Twenty defendants are facing sentences of up to life in prison, including the sole attacker who was not gunned down by police, Salah Abdeslam, a French-Moroccan national who was captured in Brussels. Six of the defendants are being tried in absentia.

Poncet said he felt it was crucial that he attend the hearings. “I can’t possibly not. It’s our lives that are being discussed in that room, and it’s important to come to support the others and to try to overcome it all.”

Survivors have taken to the witness stand to recount the horror of the attacks, but also to describe life afterwards.

Several said they had been struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, grappling with survivor’s guilt, or even feeling alienated from the rest of society.

Saturday’s commemorations are to wrap up with a minute of silence at the Stade de France in the evening before the kick-off for a game between France and Kazakhstan.

It was during a football match between France and Germany that three suicide bombers blew themselves up in 2015.

Then-French president Francois Hollande was one of the 80,000 people in the crowd, before he was discreetly whisked away to avoid triggering mass panic.

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