French police arrest ‘Chechen’ with electrical equipment

MARSEILLE: French police said Sunday they would detain a man for another 24 hours after he was arrested with electrical equipment that could be used to make an explosive device.

The man, who says he is Chechen, was detained at the main railway station in the southern city of Marseille after a woman reported him to patrolling anti-terror troops, saying he was acting strangely.

The station, a major transport hub, was shut for four hours on Saturday while it was swept by explosives experts.

Police found the electrical equipment on the man, who was aged around 50 and refused to give his name. "What he had on him was not an explosive device, it was not dangerous in itself, but it was electrical, electronic equipment that could be used to make an explosive device," public prosecutor Xavier Tarabeux told AFP. "We do not yet know his identity but this man says he is Chechen and speaks Russian," he added.

The suspect can now be detained until midday on Monday.

France has been on high alert after a Chechen-born Frenchman stabbed a man to death last week and wounded four others in an attack in Paris in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.

It was just the latest in a line of jihadist attacks in France that have killed more than 240 people in the last three years. Police and prosecutors said they were interrogating the man arrested in Marseille to ascertain whether he was planning an attack.

The city's mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin issued a statement saying an attack had been "foiled" and that the suspect had "obvious terrorist intentions".

But the case has yet to be handed to anti-terror prosecutors in Paris, as is customary in major cases of thwarted attacks.