A suspicious car, without license plates, and containing at least six or seven gas cylinders, was discovered in the night between Saturday and Sunday by the police near the Notre Dame basilica in Paris. The car was seized and, reports Le Figaro, several arrests were made. The alarm was raised by a bar employee, who saw the vehicle, a Peugeot 607, parked on the Quai de Montebello in the fifth arrondissement. The car contained at least six gas cylinders, five full in the trunk and one empty in a front seat, but no detonators. The car looked abandoned, but its lights were on.
It is currently under arrest a couple made up of a 34-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman, the owners of the car. The I-telé site adds that the woman was known to the services, as she was registered "S", or as people under attention for safety reasons. I-Telé also reports that six people were arrested last night, but four were released this morning. The police report that documents written in Arabic were also found in the car.
The investigations, always reports Le Figaro, are still ongoing and the case, which security sources define as enigmatic and disturbing, is taken very seriously in the context of the current terrorism scare. Already on 24 May, the newspaper recalled, in a hearing before the National Assembly, Patrick Calvar, director general of interior security (DGSI), said he was "persuaded" that Isis "will pass to the stage of car bombs and explosive devices".
