@JFXM
IT WAS EARLY on a Sunday morning in September when French police discovered a Peugeot parked near the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris; hazard lights flashing, license plates removed. The car carried seven gas cylinders and three cans of diesel. The perpetrators had perhaps intended to blow it up with a lit cigarette and a fuel-soaked blanket, but the vehicle failed to detonate. Three weeks later, police arrested two teenage suspects accused of planning a violent attack in Nice, the details of which haven’t been made public.
At the center of both plots: women allegedly inspired or directed by the Islamic State militant group. All had been in contact with a prominent French recruiter for ISIS, Rachid Kassim, who is believed to be in Syria. Roughly a year after the ISIS attacks in Paris that killed 130, France remains in a state of emergency, thanks in part to later assaults inspired by the militant group in Nice and the northern town of Rouen. Now, however, a new threat is emerging: women who want to wage violent jihad just like men.