French anti-terror agents arrested 10 people on Tuesday over a suspected plot to target mosques and politicians, including a government spokesman, a source close to the investigation told AFP, reports FRANCE 24.
The arrests of suspects aged 17-25 were made in the Paris region and southeast France as part of an investigation into far-right activists, the source said.
The nine men and one woman are suspected of links to 21-year-old Logan Alexandre Nisin, a former militant of the far-right group Action Française Provence who was arrested in June, the source said.
One source said the woman arrested Tuesday is Nisin’s mother.
Police investigations had unmasked “intentions to commit violent action” of which the details remained unclear, a judicial source said, but that involved “a place of worship, a politician, a migrant, drug trafficking”.
Another source named the targeted politicians as government spokesman Christophe Castaner and radical left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
A Mélenchon spokesman complained that the former presidential candidate “was not informed and requests for protection during the legislative elections was rejected”.