French police on Friday detained a social media influencer from Algeria who is accused of calling on his followers to carry out attacks in France, interior minster Bruno Retailleau said, reports The Independent.
The arrest in the Brittany port city of Brest on France's western coast comes as the country is preparing to mark the 10th anniversary next week of deadly January 2015 attacks in Paris against the satirical Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a kosher supermarket.
On Jan. 7, 2015, two French-born al-Qaida extremists stormed Charlie Hebdo's newsroom and killed 12 people, including the chief editor, cartoonists and a policeman in a nearby street. Over the next two days, an associate invoking the Islamic State group shot a policewoman to death, then stormed the supermarket in eastern Paris, killing four hostages. All three gunmen died in shootouts with police.
In a post on X, Retailleau said the Algerian influencer arrested in Brest used the pseudonym “Zazouyoussef” and “called on his community to commit attacks in France."