French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez on Sunday said he suspected a “link” between an attempt to set off explosives outside of a Bank of America office in Paris on Saturday, and the U.S.-Israeli joint operation in Iran.
Nuñez told this to the TF1 television channel in connection with the arrest of three people over the weekend on suspicion of terrorist activity.
Nuñez did not say whether the suspected attack was also connected to a newly surfaced group called Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya (“The Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand”), which has targeted several Jewish and American targets in Europe since March 9.
France24 revealed details from the investigation in Paris that corresponded with characteristics of some of the attacks for which the new group has claimed responsibility.
An unnamed police source told France24 that one of the suspects, who was apprehended outside the bank with explosives, said he’d been recruited via the Snapchat app to carry out the bombing in exchange for €600 ($692). When the patrolling officers arrested him, he was about to ignite the device with a lighter, the source told France24.
Dutch Justice Minister David van de Weel said earlier this month that four teenagers whom police had arrested in connection with a March 13 explosion outside a synagogue in Rotterdam were “recruited.”
In addition to the Rotterdam synagogue and another one in Liege, Belgium, Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya has also targeted a school and a Bank of New York branch in Amsterdam, as well as four ambulances of the Hatzola Jewish emergency service in London.
Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism said in a recent report that content published by the group has “spread quickly on Telegram channels affiliated with Shi’ite militant networks and pro-Iranian circles, including channels linked to Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).”
Social network posts in which responsibility was claimed for attacks allegedly committed by Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya showed differences in terminology. A statement saying that the Jewish community of Antwerp was targeted last week said the torching of a car there was as “revenge for the blood of Palestinians,” adding that “operations will continue and intensify until the liberation of our occupied lands on beloved Palestine.”
Yet a previous statement about the torching of four ambulances in London on March 23 used Jewish terminology for the Jewish state, calling it “The Land of Israel.”
