Police in Geneva on Thursday raised the alert level and searched the city for several suspects believed to have links to the Islamic State group, officials said.
The security services in the Canton of Geneva said they had received information on Wednesday from Swiss federal authorities about suspicious individuals in the Geneva area.
The Tribune de Geneve newspaper, in an unconfirmed report, said the intelligence originally came from the US.
“We went from a vague threat to a specific threat,” Geneva security spokeswoman Emmanuelle Lo Verso said, adding that police were “actively searching” for the suspects.
The office of Switzerland’s top prosecutor said in a statement that it had opened a probe into “a terrorist threat in the Geneva region,” targeting unnamed individuals over possible support for banned groups, including “al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.”
The statement said the probe was opened on Wednesday and that Swiss federal authorities were coordinating with their Geneva counterparts.
“The main goal is to prevent a terrorist event,” it added.
The searches, though apparently not linked to last month’s deadly attacks in Paris, came amid widening efforts across Europe to hunt possible Islamic State supporters.
In Brussels on Thursday, EU lawmakers backed plans to track airline passenger names as part of efforts to prevent a repeat of the Paris violence, some of whose perpetrators traveled freely across Europe before the carnage.
In Britain, which applauded the passenger tracking plan, new Home Office data showed that the number of terror suspects apprehended has reached a record high, with 315 terror-related arrests in the year to September — an increase of a third over the preceding 12 months.
In Geneva, which is almost entirely enclosed by France, authorities said the search for possible extremists was being conducted “in the context of the investigation following the Paris attacks.”
Multiple sources, who requested anonymity, said there did not appear to be a direct link with the coordinated November 13 gun and suicide bombing attacks that left 130 dead.
A security source at the UN in Geneva told reporters that four people were being sought over possible ties to the Islamic State, which claimed the Paris atrocities and has vowed further strikes.
The UN source said the Palais des Nations — the agency’s European headquarters — was evacuated on Wednesday night as security personnel conducted office-to-office searches.
Security guards posted at the UN gates were carrying sub-machine guns on Thursday, a departure from normal practice.
Geneva’s government said police had “increased their level of vigilance” with reinforcements sent to key locations, including the airports and the headquarters of the many international organizations based in the Swiss city.
However, there did not appear to be a massive mobilization of security personnel across the city, journalists said.
Police in the two French regions bordering Geneva — Ain and Haute-Savoie — told reporters that controls had been beefed up at all crossings.
In France, a man was detained on Thursday after weapons were discovered in his home in a continuation of the rolling searches seen since a state of emergency was imposed after the bloodshed in Paris.
Officials in the Drome region said the suspect was found during a traffic stop in possession of a picture of Salah Abdeslam, the key Paris suspect who remains at large.
The individual was reportedly known to police in the area over previous incidents of low-level criminality.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese