Report: French Foil Terror Attacks

(CBS)  Four self-confessed Islamic militants arrested in France were planning "one or several" terrorist attacks in the near future, the Interior Ministry said Friday.

The ministry said two of the four suspects told investigators they received training in the Pankisi Gorge, a remote region in Georgia that borders Chechnya, and had met Chechen rebel leaders.

The four were arrested Monday in a Paris suburb by French security agents acting on orders from top counter-terrorism judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere. Agents also found suspected detonator components and chemicals used in the making of electronic circuits, the ministry said in a statement.

It said that during questioning, all four suspects expressed "Jihadi convictions."

They did not confess to planning an attack, the statement said. But "there is no doubt, given the elements found, that one or several terrorist actions were being prepared in the more or less short term," it said.

Agents also found a suit to protect against nuclear, chemical and biological attack, that is still being analyzed, as well as two empty gas bottles and electronic components that could serve as detonators, the statement said.

It named one of those arrested as Merouane Benhamed. It said Benhamed was a former leader of Algerian fighters and a veteran of conflicts in Afghanistan and Chechnya. The statement gave no details. The arrests followed an investigation into Chechen networks, the statement said, without giving details.

The four, identified earlier as three Algerians and a Moroccan, were expected to appear Friday before a judge.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday that the suspects were thought to have spent time in training camps in Afghanistan and Chechnya and had been in contact with Rabah Kadre, who was arrested with two other suspects last month in Britain on terrorism-related charges.

Kadre, 35, is accused of possessing materials for the "preparation, instigation or commission" of terrorism. According to French news reports, he has links to the al Qaeda network and had been to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.

Sarkozy indicated the suspects were planning an attack, saying that "with these four individuals, it was better to arrest them before rather than after." He did not elaborate.

Bruguiere, the anti-terrorism judge with wide powers of investigation, has recently stepped up arrests amid mounting concerns in Europe that a terror attack may be imminent.

Russia is now in the third year of its second war to restrain the breakaway province of Chechnya, where a mainly Muslim independence movement has become a focus of Islamic terrorists rivaling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in importance.

Earlier this year, accusations that Chechen rebels were sheltering in Georgia led to threats from Russia to make incursions into the area.

That was before a group of Chechen rebels seized a theater in Moscow for several days, a siege that ended when Russian special forces stormed the theater, using disabling gas that killed at least 129 hostages, along with their captors.

The French government has focused on potential Islamic terrorism for years, due in part to its large Muslim population and ties to the Middle East through former colonial holdings, like Algeria.