Europe on edge after attacks and anti-terror raids (LIVE BLOG)

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Terror cells in Europe

CNN reports on potential sleeper cells in Europe:

As many as 20 sleeper cells of between 120 and 180 people could be ready to strike in France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, a Western intelligence source told CNN.

Read on here.

Violent extremism not existential threat, will be defeated, Obama says

US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron held a joint news conference this afternoon. Here are some of the points they mentioned pertaining to terrorism threats:

More from Reuters:

US President Barack Obama said on Friday he did not consider violent extremism an existential threat and he is confident it can be defeated.

"This phenomenon of violent extremism — the ideology, the networks, the capacity to recruit young people — this has metastasized and it is widespread. And it has penetrated communities around the world," Obama told a news conference.

But, he added, "I do not consider it an existential threat. … It is one that we're ultimately going to defeat. But we can't just defeat it through weapons."

5 charged with terrorism after Belgium raids

Agence France-Presse — Belgian authorities charged five people with "participating in the activities of a terrorist group" following a series of raids to foil imminent attacks, the prosecutor's office said Friday.

Three people, including one who survived a deadly police raid in the eastern town of Verviers, were placed in custody and two others conditionally released, prosecutor spokesman Eric Van der Sijpt told AFP.

'You've got a friend'

Yes, this actually happened.

US Secretary of State John Kerry brought James Taylor to France to sing 'You've got a friend,' The Washington Post's Aaron Blake reports.

Proof:

And ICYMI:

Obama and Cameron to hold news conference

The conference is expected to begin at 12:20 p.m. ET. Watch it live on NBC News:

Increased surveillance?

"[British Prime Minister David] Cameron has argued that intelligence agencies must be able to intercept terror suspects' communications on encrypted social media and messaging sites," The Associated Press' Josh Lederman writes, adding, "White House spokesman Josh Earnest wouldn't say whether Obama would support a government "backdoor" to get around encryption and allow authorities to monitor communications that might help to protect national security, but Earnest said the issue surely would arise in Obama's meeting with Cameron."

London cafe owner threatened over 'Je suis Charlie' sign

GlobalPost's Corinne Purtill reports from London, UK:

Last weekend, after the deadly attacks in Paris, Adel Defilaux chalked "Je Suis Charlie" on the blackboard in front of his coffee shop on London's Brick Lane.

Defilaux, a 32-year-old French Muslim from Marseilles who has owned the Antishop cafe for a year, hardly considered it a controversial move. Yet days later, on Tuesday morning, a man walked in and demanded he remove the message.

 

The Antishop cafe in London's Brick Lane. Its French Muslim owner was threatened after placing this #JeSuisCharlie sign out front on Saturday. "The local community has been amazing," he says, but he is now under police protection. #globalpost

A photo posted by Corinne Purtill (@corinnepurtill) on Jan 16, 2015 at 6:12am PST

When he declined, the man became angry and said the victims of last week’s attacks on the Charlie Hebdo office deserved to die, Defilaux said. Then the man threatened that if the sign stayed up, there would be consequences, he said.

In the days since the story received national and then international news attention, Defilaux has been placed under 24-hour police protection. The French Embassy has offered assistance.

"It's crazy," Defilaux said. "I just want to go on holiday."

Back at the coffee shop, a motorcycle backfired outside. The cafe abruptly fell silent before resuming its afternoon chatter. 

The Antishop is located in the heart of Brick Lane, an East London neighborhood that for generations has been home to some of the city's Bangladeshi community.

Situated amid curry houses and Bengali sweet shops, the cafe is among the neighborhood's newer, hipster-friendly offerings. It has mod wallpaper and mismatched chairs.

Defilaux described the business as a social enterprise. The cafe gives free coffee to homeless locals.

 

Adel Defilaux, owner of the Antishop cafe on London's Brick Lane. Despite receiving threats for his #JeSuisCharlie sign, the Muslim native of Marseilles, France says "we all have to fight for freedom of speech." #globalpost

A photo posted by Corinne Purtill (@corinnepurtill) on Jan 16, 2015 at 7:12am PST

The patrons Friday afternoon were as diverse as the neighborhood: a French-speaking man in a business suit, a young woman in hijab and skinny trousers, a jittery man clutching an e-cigarette and a copy of Macbeth while muttering about corporate media.

Since news broke of his threat, the shop's Facebook page has received messages of support from Northumberland to New York and Brisbane to Hackney.

Police are looking through CCTV footage to identify the man, who is the only person to have spoken negatively about the sign to Defilaux. But when he threatened further violence, the man reportedly said "we," implying that there were others behind him.

"You will remove your sign because we cannot accept having a sign like this here. It is opposite a mosque and it is a Muslim area," Defilaux told The Telegraph newspaper.

The fact that Defilaux himself is Muslim could make him a target for violence, he's been told. Still, the sign stays up, and he hasn't taken that vacation yet.

"I'm still continuing to spread the message that we cannot accept the fear provoked by a few people," he said. "That's why I want to keep going."

France's determined response to terror has given Hollande a boost

GlobalPost's Paul Ames reports from Lisbon, Portugal:

As horror swept across France last week, the terror attacks that left 17 dead looked sure to give a boost to Marine Le Pen, whose anti-immigration National Front party has long played on fears of extremism among the country's Muslim communities.

Yet as France rallied in response to the killings, Le Pen has slipped out of the headlines. In fact, her party has been marginalized amid the unity demonstrated by citizens of all colors and faiths at the marches that drew almost 4 million to the streets of Paris and other French cities last weekend.

Commentators watching France's biggest street gatherings since the 1944 liberation from Nazi occupation believe the country was reaffirming traditional values of tolerance and fraternity, which have eroded over recent years of economic decline and political division.

"Something unique happened on Sunday on the streets of France," wrote Laurent Joffrin, editor of the left-leaning daily Liberation.

"The country … rose up in a great civic impulse to reject violence, obscurantism, communal division. The Republic took a blow to the heart. Two days later the Republic was standing tall."

Paris post office hostage-taker surrenders

Agence France-Presse — A man who holed up in a post office in a suburb northwest of Paris with two hostages on Friday surrendered and has been arrested, a police source said.

"There was no assault, the man gave himself up," the source said, adding that the hostages were "shocked but not injured."

The rise of nationalist parties in Europe

Man takes hostages in post office near Paris

Reuters — An armed man has taken several hostages at a post office northwest of Paris, an official at the city prosecutor's office told Reuters.

The man equipped with a military weapon had taken an unconfirmed number of hostages at the post office in the town of Colombes, not far outside the capital, French media reported earlier.

"I cannot confirm or deny whether it is linked to terrorism," the official said declining to give further details.

BFM TV, citing an unidentified source, said the hostage taking was not related to last week's attacks in Paris.

French police arrested 12 people earlier on Friday suspected of helping militant Islamist gunmen in last week's killings in Paris. There have been numerous false alerts across the city since the attacks.

Here's a quick update on what's happening in Belgium

Reuters — Belgian police were questioning 13 suspects on Friday detained during raids against an Islamist group they feared planned to attack police and two other people were held in France, state prosecutors said.

A spokesman told a news conference there was still no apparent link to last week's Islamist attacks in Paris and the identities of two gunmen killed during one of the raids on Thursday, in the eastern town of Verviers, had yet to be confirmed.

As well as guns, including four AK-47 assault rifles, and explosives, police uniforms were found in the apartment at Verviers, spokesman Eric Van Der Sypt said, adding: "This group was on the point of carrying out terrorist attacks aiming to kill police officers in the streets and in police stations."