"The Threat Is Still Present"

Terrorist gestures before making his getaway after Charlie Hebdo attack

Reuters

"The Threat Is Still Present"

"The work on these attacks, on these terrorist and barbaric acts continues ... because we consider that there are most probably some possible accomplices."
"The threat is still present."
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls

Yes, it most certainly is. On Thursday a policewoman was deliberately run down by a vehicle in which was four men who were not out joy-riding, but purposefully seeking to make their mark as Islamist jihadis, responding to the urging of ISIS propaganda videos to respect their heritage and remind the kuffars that it is Islam that will command the day through conquest. This new onslaught took place right outside French President Francois Hollande's residence.

Witnesses to the new 'event' described an intentional targeting of the policewoman. But the police are exercising the caution of political correctness; not quite yet prepared to admit it to be yet another terror attack. Even while all of France remains on high alert with the deaths of 17 innocent civilians at the hands of Islamist terrorists; the now-infamous venues of the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices and the Hyper Cacher kosher market.

Despite a heavy police presence outside the presidential palace in the early morning hours of Thursday, resulting from the attacks and the murders of three police officers, the attack occurred. Once the policewoman had been struck the four individuals in the vehicle swiftly exited and fled the scene. Two managed to escape, while police arrested two others now under questioning as police search out the escaped two.

A police spokesperson said that the policewoman "says that the driver looked at her in the eye and did not pull on the brakes, and that he voluntarily hit her". Voluntarily mind, not deliberately with murderous malicious intent.

Police in Verviers

Bruno Fahy/AFP/Getty

And next door in Belgium the Islamists are making their mark in active jihad as well, lest anyone believe that the carnage in Paris fulfills the agenda for the present. Belgium has its own quite special and specific experience with violent jihad. When a Jewish museum in Brussels was attacked last yer by a French national who had fought in Syria, and took the opportunity that his battle-worn credentials gave him to murder four people at the museum.

In Antwerp a trial is currently underway where 46 members of Sharia4Belgium have been charged with "belonging to a terrorist organization and brainwashing young men in Belgium into fighting a holy war in Syria". As it happens, 38 of the group are being tried in absentia. But there is a more recent event that has taken place. An "anti-terrorism operation" in Verviers on Thursday resulted in two suspects firing on police who shot them dead.

"There is a link between the operations in Belgium and the Paris attacks which left 17 victims and three jihadists dead last week", according to a French cable news channel.  A Brussels arms dealer reportedly confessed Tuesday to selling the weapons used in the Paris attacks to the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and presumably to the terrorist who attacked the kosher market as well.

Verviers has a population of 56,000. This Google map shows where it is located:

Google Maps

According to other news sources, the suspects that were the target of Thursday's raid are "believed to have links to ISIS and to have been planning attacks in Belgium". The Guardian quoted a Flemish news source claiming the suspects planned to attack a police station. At a press conference, a Belgian federal prosecutor stated that the suspects made use of automatic weapons to open fire on the law enforcement personnel, but none of them were injured.