PARIS: French police arrested nine people and another was arrested in Switzerland in coordinated counter-terrorism swoops that follow a spate of deadly attacks in Europe in recent years.
Swiss officials said a 23-year-old Colombian woman was taken into custody after police raids there. A Swiss man aged 27 was among those arrested in parallel French police swoops linked to extremist activity, they added.
French police conducted simultaneous raids on premises on the eastern edge of Paris and in the southeastern region that borders Italy and Switzerland, taking nine people into custody, a source in the French judiciary said.
Those arrested were aged from 18 to 65 years, said the French source, who spoke on condition of anonymity — standard practice for most French officials on such matters.
Le Parisien newspaper said it was possible the raids had thwarted an attack.
The French judicial source spoke of suspected participation in a criminal terrorist network and of communications via the Telegram network that many militants use because messages can be encrypted.
A Swiss statement cited suspected involvement in terrorist activity and banned Islamist militant groups such as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State.
The arrests took place a week after France introduced tougher national security laws to permanently replace emergency powers given to police and intelligence services following deadly attacks by Islamist militants on Paris two years ago.
More than 240 people have been killed in France since early 2015 in attacks by Islamist militants or assailants inspired by the Daesh group, which has sought to establish a caliphate in Syria and Iraq and called for attacks on France.
France is among countries contributing to military operations against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb, who says 32 attack plots have been thwarted in the past two years in France, played down the latest operation when asked about it during a visit to Berlin.
“It’s part of operations which, sadly, are conducted relatively regularly, where we arrest a number of people we consider dangerous,” he said.
French police arrest nine in anti-terror swoop
French police arrest nine in anti-terror swoop
Zuckerberg says Meta no longer designs apps to maximize screentime
- Meta Platforms CEO faces questioned at a landmark trial over youth social media addiction
- It was the billionaire Facebook founder’s first time testifying in court on Instagram’s effect on the mental health of young users
LOS ANGELES: Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushed back in court on Wednesday against a lawyer’s suggestion that he had misled Congress about the design of its social media platforms, as a landmark trial over youth social media addiction continues.
Zuckerberg was questioned on his statements to Congress in 2024, at a hearing where he said the company did not give its teams the goal of maximizing time spent on its apps.
Mark Lanier, a lawyer for a woman who accuses Meta of harming her mental health when she was a child, showed jurors emails from 2014 and 2015 in which Zuckerberg laid out aims to increase time spent on the app by double-digit percentage points. Zuckerberg said that while Meta previously had goals related to the amount of time users spent on the app, it has since changed its approach.
“If you are trying to say my testimony was not accurate, I strongly disagree with that,” Zuckerberg said.
The appearance was the billionaire Facebook founder’s first time testifying in court on Instagram’s effect on the mental health of young users.
While Zuckerberg has previously testified on the subject before Congress, the stakes are higher at the jury trial in Los Angeles, California. Meta may have to pay damages if it loses the case, and the verdict could erode Big Tech’s longstanding legal defense against claims of user harm.
The lawsuit and others like it are part of a global backlash against social media platforms over children’s mental health.
Australia has prohibited access to social media platforms for users under age 16, and other countries including Spain are considering similar curbs. In the US, Florida has prohibited companies from allowing users under age 14. Tech industry trade groups are challenging the law in court.
The case involves a California woman who started using Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube as a child. She alleges the companies sought to profit by hooking kids on their services despite knowing social media could harm their mental health. She alleges the apps fueled her depression and suicidal thoughts and is seeking to hold the companies liable.
Meta and Google have denied the allegations, and pointed to their work to add features that keep users safe. Meta has often pointed to a National Academies of Sciences finding that research does not show social media changes kids’ mental health.
The lawsuit serves as a test case for similar claims in a larger group of cases against Meta, Alphabet’s Google, Snap and TikTok. Families, school districts and states have filed thousands of lawsuits in the US accusing the companies of fueling a youth mental health crisis. Over the years, investigative reporting has unearthed internal Meta documents showing the company was aware of potential harm.
Meta researchers found that teens who report that Instagram regularly made them feel bad about their bodies saw significantly more “eating disorder adjacent content” than those who did not, Reuters reported in October.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, testified last week that he was unaware of a recent Meta study showing no link between parental supervision and teens’ attentiveness to their own social media use. Teens with difficult life circumstances more often said they used Instagram habitually or unintentionally, according to the document shown at trial.
Meta’s lawyer told jurors at the trial that the woman’s health records show her issues stem from a troubled childhood, and that social media was a creative outlet for her.
