18 May 2018•Update: 20 May 2018
By Hajer M'tiri
PARIS
French police have arrested two Egyptian-born men suspected of plotting an attack using either explosives or the lethal poison ricin, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said on Friday.
"They are two young individuals of Egyptian origin who were preparing an attack," Collomb told French broadcaster BFM TV.
He explained that French intelligence identified the suspect after intercepting communications from the two men on the secure messaging platform Telegram.
"They possessed instructions on how to build ricin-based poisons," said the interior minister without giving any further details on the arrest and the nationalities of the suspects.
The arrests comes a week after a Chechen-born Frenchman went on a stabbing rampage in central Paris, killing one person before police shot him dead.
French daily Le Figaro later reported that one of the suspects was charged while the other released.
According to French Interior Ministry figures, at least 20 attacks were foiled in France in 2017.
