Yahoo News Five women botched Notre-Dame car bomb terror plot by 'using wrong fuel' to light fuse, Paris court hears
Two women who sought to blow up a home-made car bomb outside Notre-Dame cathedral only failed because they tried to set it on fire with “the wrong type of fuel”, a Paris court has heard.
In the first high-profile case involving female jihadists in France, the women stand accused of seeking to detonate gas cylinders in the boot of their car outside the famed cathedral three years ago.
The country was reeling at the time from a wave of Islamist terror attacks, which have since 2015 killed over 250 people.
Two of the women, who both pledged allegiance to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), risk life in prison for their alleged roles in the plot, with another two allegedly accomplices facing the same sentence for later trying to help one of the women escape.
A fifth woman faces a possible 30-year sentence, while a sixth is being tried for failing to alert authorities to the planned attack.
The women were seized after an empty Peugeot 607 sedan was found parked near the square outside Notre-Dame frequented by thousands of tourists.
Police swooped on them after a bar employee noticed a gas cylinder in the back seat. That cylinder was empty but five full ones were discovered in the car boot.
Prosecutors say in 2016 on the night of September 3-4, Ines Madani and Ornella Gilligmann parked the car after sending a video claiming responsibility for the planned attack to Rachid Kassim, a notorious French member of Isil.
They said the pair had doused the car with diesel fuel and tried to set it alight with a cigarette, but failed because diesel is not easily flammable.
"Only the wrong choice of fuel... caused this attempt to fail,” said investigating magistrates.
Gilligmann was arrested in southern France while seeking to flee, and Madani holed up in an apartment in the Paris suburb of Essonne that belonged to Amel Sakaou, who is also on trial.
They were soon joined by alleged accomplice Sarah Hervouet.
The group were arrested a few days later after trying to leave the apartment armed with kitchen knives. Hervouet stabbed one officer in the shoulder, while Madani was shot in the leg.
The failed attack is thought to have been piloted by Kassim, mainly via the Telegram app.
Kassim, who is being tried in absentia, is also suspected of directing the brutal murder of a police couple outside their home in June 2016, a killing that was broadcast live on Facebook, and another in which an elderly priest's throat was cut.
He is believed to have been killed in a coalition airstrike near the Iraqi city of Mosul in February 2017.
The trial continues.
