The police probe is focusing on suspected associates of Larossi
Abballa, the Frenchman of Moroccan origin who pledged allegiance to the
Islamist militant group and told police negotiators during the attack
that he had answered a call to "kill infidels at home with their
families."
Police arrest one, swoop on houses in cop killer investigation
French police
on Tuesday arrested a man with suspected links to the killer of a police
commander and raided several houses, the prosecutor's office said, part
of a deepening investigation into last week's attack claimed by Islamic State.
The police probe is focusing on suspected associates of Larossi Abballa, the Frenchman of Moroccan origin who pledged allegiance to the Islamist militant group and told police negotiators during the attack that he had answered a call to "kill infidels at home with their families."
"There was a chance that these people might carry out other attacks against police officers. We were removing any doubt," said the Versailles prosecutor leading the investigation.
The
prosecutor did not name the man who had been detained and it was not
immediately clear whether police missed other targets or decided no
further arrests were required.
Tuesday's swoop
came after the Paris prosecutor's office said on Saturday that two other
suspected associates were to be placed under investigation for
membership of a terrorist organisation.
Abballa stabbed 42-year-old Jean-Baptiste Salvaing to death in a suburb west of Paris before taking Salvaing's partner, Jessica Schneider, and their son hostage. He used a knife to kill Schneider before he was shot dead by elite commandos.
Abballa
was jailed in 2013 for his involvement in a militant recruitment
network that sent young men to Pakistan. The men placed under
investigation on Saturday, named as Charaf-Din Aberouz and Saad Rajraji, were founding members of the group and sentenced alongside Abballa, prosecutors said.
At
this stage, investigators have not made any direct link between Aberouz
and Rajraji and the killings last Monday, the first Islamic
State-inspired attack in France since militant gunmen and bombers killed
130 people in Paris last November.
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