France is confiscating weapons from
roughly 100 people on a watchlist of potential Islamist militants, the
interior minister said on Thursday, two weeks after state prosecutors
said an assailant inspired by Islamic State had been a gun-club member.
Minister Gerard Collomb was speaking
ahead of a parliamentary vote to extend emergency search-and-arrest
powers given to police after Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers killed
130 people in Paris in November 2015.
“We traced about a hundred … We’re sizing
up the situation and taking the weapons away,” he told TV channel
CNews, adding that police had foiled seven attacks in France this year
alone.
The issue of weapons came to light last
month when public prosecutors confirmed that a 31-year-old man, who died
after ramming his car into a police convoy in Paris, had joined a gun
sports club to train as a jihadist fighter.
He had built up a large weapons arsenal
and renewed his gun permit, despite being on an intelligence services
list of people who appear to have been radicalised and could commit
attacks.
Prosecutors said the man had sworn
allegiance to the Islamic State militant group, whose bases in
Syria and
Iraq are being bombed by jets from a coalition of countries including
France.
They say he appears to have been killed
by the thick orange fumes that billowed out of his vehicle after he hit
the police van on the Champs Elysees avenue.
The government of President Emmanuel
Macron is proposing legislation to replace the system of emergency rule
in November, including changes making it easier for officials vetting
gun permit requests to cross-check against watchlists of would-be
militants.
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