French police arrested and charged a teenager in connection with a planned terror campaign, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) has confirmed.
The 17-year-old from Vesoul in Haute-Saône has been held since Thursday, March 13th. He is under investigation for “participation in a criminal conspiracy with a view to preparing one or more crimes of attack.”
After the boy was arrested for carrying a knife in a public place close to his school, his social media output led the authorities to reclassify his activities as terror-related. The youth claimed to be a member of Daesh and flagged up several prospective targets during Ramadan, including a church, a synagogue, and official U.S. or Israeli premises. These violent intentions were also made clear from reading the suspect’s account on the encrypted messaging service Telegram, PNAT said.
French law enforcement is treating the arrest and detention as the first successful counterterror operation of the year, following knife attacks in January and February—at a time when, increasingly, French schools are looking like breeding grounds for Islamism.
The accused teen’s lawyer Réda Ghilaci told AFP:
My client is a minor, and therefore a child within the meaning of many international conventions. He is a particularly fragile child. He is not radicalized, and his desire to commit acts stems from a desire to end his life to stop a deep-seated malaise, not a desire to commit a terrorist act.
Almost 20 adolescents in France were indicted for terror-related offences in 2024. Experts point to the role of online radicalism, including content promoted through video games, in amplifying the threat.
Even if the defence lawyer genuinely thinks his client’s mental fragility explains the sinister planning online, such conduct reflects the wider problem of how Islamist influence and violence enjoy a high profile across contemporary France.
