Woman Faces Paris Judge in Probe of Female ‘Terror Commando’

A judge handed preliminary charges on Saturday to a 29-year-old woman whom authorities suspect is part of a female “terrorist commando” in the service of the Islamic State group – one of five suspects in an aborted attack near Notre Dame Cathedral and another possible attack thwarted by police.

Prosecutor Francois Molin says the woman’s fingerprints were found in a vehicle loaded with gas canisters discovered Sunday near Notre Dame.

One of the women, identified as 23-year old Sarah H., had ties to French nationals who killed three people in recent terror attacks on French soil, Paris Prosecutor François Molins told a news conference.

Known to authorities for previously planning to go to Syria, she was arrested in southern France on Tuesday with her boyfriend, who has since been released.

A confrontation with three women outside ensued, including the 19-year-old daughter of the car’s owner, Ines Madani.

The trio were looking at train stations in Paris and south of the capital as potential targets, as well as the police, according to sources close to the investigation. “They were guided by individuals in Syria in the ranks of Islamic State”.

Sarah H. had promised to marry Larossi Abballa, 25, who died in a raid in a Paris suburb after killing two police employees and taking their infant hostage in June, Mr. Molins said. She was shot in the leg as she lunged at a police officer with a knife – after another woman, Sarah H., 23, attacked and wounded a plain clothes officer with a kitchen knife through the open window of his auto, Molins said on Friday.

“A terrorist cell comprised of young women. has been dismantled”, Francois Molins said.

The women and their associates had already been under surveillance but the discovery of the gas-filled vehicle near Notre Dame had pitted the security forces in “a race against time” to arrest them, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.

Kudusov’s lawyer said he was a Chechen born in 1991 who had arrived in France as a child and had been placed under house arrest in 2012.

He added that 17 foreigners had been expelled this year for posing a “serious threat to public order”.