Six hundred meters from the Croisette lies a community of French Muslims who remained largely invisible until their mosque briefly became the unwitting base for one of the most dangerous terrorist cells in French history: Festivalgoers “have no idea of what’s really going on here.”
…the Mosquee Al Madina, the main mosque in Cannes, which sits above the Croisette, just 600 meters from the Palais des Festivals…
…the tension has escalated as the Cannes Film Festival gets underway amid heightened security in the wake of terrorist bombings in Paris and Brussels. Recent reports from Senegal via Italian intelligence warned of possible terrorist attacks on beaches in the South of France and Italy, raising the specter of small bombs, planted under deck chairs and hidden inside cans of energy drinks, just waiting to detonate…
…reporting the details of terror cells like the so-called Cannes-Torcy gang, a 22-member jihadi cell with ties to ISIS in Syria that attacked a Jewish grocery in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles…
…He first was detected crossing the Greek border but was let go — even though he had $1,700 in cash and a USB drive containing a document titled “How to Make Bombs in the Name of Allah” — because there was no warrant for his arrest in Europe. Shortly thereafter, he was arrested at his father’s high-rise apartment outside Cannes, where he was found with three Red Bull cans containing TATP explosives and wigs and disguises thought to be part of his plan to stage the carnival attack…
…The kosher grocery in Sarcelles that was attacked by members of the Cannes-Torcy terrorist cell…