French arrest 2 suspected of selling guns to Paris attacker

Police in France and Belgium, where the attackers began their journey, are sweeping wide to find those behind it. Police are still investigating two January attacks around Paris that killed 17 people.

One of the two men arrested on Tuesday in Villiers-sur-Marne to the east of Paris was deemed a “peripheral” suspect in the investigation into the November 13 attacks, judiciary sources said. The attack occurred on January 9 – days after the Charlie Hebdo attacks – when Amedy Coulibaly stormed the market, killing four people and taking others hostage before he died in a shootout with police.

French authorities also confirmed that the fugitive terrorist suspect Salah Abdeslam wore an explosive belt found on a Paris street 10 days after the November terror attacks, according to a source cited by the U.S. news website CNN.

A 26-year-old French citizen suspected to have played a key logistical role is still on the run and subject to an global arrest warrant.

Last month, the Islamic State’s French-language magazine Dar-al-Islam urged followers to kill teachers in France, describing them as “enemies of Allah” for teaching secularism.

The weapons, which ended up in Coulibaly’s possession, allegedly had been sold to him through a company that belongs to Hermant’s partner, the news agency reported.

A French teacher who falsely claimed he had been stabbed by a man shouting “Islamic State” has been sent to a psychiatric hospital, prosecutors say.

Separately, a 29-year-old man was arrested Tuesday morning in connection with the series of November 13 attacks in Paris, according to a representative for the same office.

French media were reporting that five of the guns used by Coulibaly in the supermarket siege were purchased from Hermant, but it remained unclear he was aware of their intended goal the sales were apparently handled via intermediaries. The husband has been jailed for arms trafficking since January.