Two terrorist plots, Paris and Cleveland, foiled by LE.

[I B Hankering]

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Six held over attack plot on Iran opposition in France

Belgium, France and Germany have detained six people, including an Iranian diplomat posted in Vienna, over an alleged plot to bomb a weekend rally by an exiled Iranian opposition group in France, authorities and sources said.

The claimed foiled attack was meant to have targeted a meeting of thousands of Iranian opposition supporters just north of Paris that was also attended by leading US figures ...

(AFP)

FBI arrests man it says was plotting July 4 attack in downtown Cleveland

The FBI in Cleveland has arrested a 48-year-old man it says was planning a July 4 attack in the city’s downtown, authorities said.

The man — Demetrius N. Pitts, who also used the names Abdur Raheem Rahfeeq and Salahadeen Osama Waleed — was taken into custody Sunday and charged with attempted material support of a foreign terrorist organization....

The FBI had been tipped to Pitts as far back as 2015, when he sent a private Facebook message to “The Craig Sewing Show,” a California-based political commentary show, saying: “The USA will be destroy. Allahu Akbar.” In 2017, he made public Facebook comments suggesting violence, and an FBI investigation that continued into 2018 determined he was “willing to conduct a U.S. based attack,” according to the affidavit.

The FBI began investigating Pitts when he lived in the Cincinnati area and continued to monitor him when he moved in May to a Cleveland suburb, Anthony said. Last month, an undercover FBI employee posing as someone with al-Qaeda ties met with Pitts, and Pitts talked of chopping off people’s heads and hands, according to the affidavit.

“You take the head and the three hands and that’s how you make your statement. You send it straight to ’em. The person’s head and his, and his two hands. And they know right off the bat, boy these people ain’t playing,” he told the undercover FBI employee.

“Can you imagine the fear that that would strike in the hearts. I mean that would spread through the millions,” the employee responded.

“Oh yeah. And I’m not — I’m not scared to do it. That’s how I would send Donald Trump back,” Pitts said.

(WaPo)