French Authorities Arrest Three Suspects in Connection to Separate Paris Terror Attacks

Police in France have arrested three people in connection with two terror attacks that occurred ten months apart in Paris.

One of the people detained is a 29-year-old man who was arrested Tuesday by a counterterrorism squad at his home in the eastern Paris suburb of Villiers-sur-Marne.

According to French radio station France Info, investigators believe the suspect might have been in contact with accomplices of the radical Islamist gunmen who killed 130 people and wounded hundreds more on November 13, during a wave of deadly attacks in and around the French capital.

A source close to the investigation said that the suspect was "on the periphery of the investigation," suggesting that he wasn't directly involved in the massacre.

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Two other people — a 52-year-old man named Claude Hermant and his girlfriend — were arrested and questioned Tuesday in the northern city of Lille as part of the investigation into the deadly January siege on the Hyper Cacher kosher grocery store, in the Porte de Vincennes neighborhood, in eastern Paris. Gunman Amédy Coulibaly took hostages at the store on January 9, two days after armed gunmen stormed the Paris office of satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo, wiping out much of the magazine's editorial team.

Four people died during the hostage siege, and Coulibaly was also linked to the fatal shooting of policewoman Clarissa Jean-Phillipe the day before.

Hermant, who has actually been detained since January on arms trafficking charges, is suspected of supplying Coulibaly with some of the guns used during the siege. The weapons, which include an assault rifle and four Tokarev pistols, were allegedly sold to Coulibaly through a company owned by Hermant's girlfriend.

According to local French daily La Voix du Nord, seven men have already been charged with providing logistical help and weapons to Coulibaly.

La Voix du Nord first exposed a potential connection between Hermant and Coulibaly back in January, suggesting that the weapons had transited through Belgium, where Hermant had ties.

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According to French news weekly Marianne, which profiled Hermant back in May, Coulibaly might have purchased at least one of the weapons through a garage in Charleroi, Belgium.

Marianne delved into Hermant's past and his known links to neo-fascist movements in the region. It described Hermant as a former paratrooper and mercenary, with a talent for re-commissioning old weapons and selling them on. The magazine also highlighted a stint as a heavy in the French National Front's shady security unit, the Department of Protection and Security.

Hermant was also outed as a police informant earlier this year when La Voix du Nord published emails between the alleged trafficker and the police, leading some to speculate that the suspect traded juicy tips for a certain level of impunity.

The emails, which clearly imply the police had some knowledge of Hermant's dubious activities in Belgium, raised uncomfortable questions at the time about the role and responsibility of the state in the January attacks.

Image via Wikimedia Commons