French police 'thwart army beheading plot'

French counter-terror police claim to have thwarted a terrorist plot to behead a military chief and arrested four men suspected of planning the attack.

The four suspects, aged 16, 17, 19 and 23, were each arrested in separate locations across France on Monday morning, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in a statement Wednesday. He also confirmed that one of suspects used to be employed as a signalman by the French navy but was recently kicked out for unspecified reasons.

According to Cazeneuve, the 17-year-old suspect initially showed up on the French intelligence service's radar in late 2014, after the he began showing signs that he wanted to travel to Syria in conversations on with French jihadis on social media.

After spotting the suspect's interest in joining Isis, French police questioned the man in the Autumn of 2014 but didn't prosecute him due to insufficient evidence.

French police sources said that French intelligence agents wiretapped the suspect's mobile phone shortly after his release, which led them to learn of the terror plot and the other three suspects.

The men had been planning to target the Fort Bear military base at Port-Vendres in the south west of France, a training centre for France's special commando forces who take part in foreign missions and also the former workplace of the 23-year-old suspect.

Sources close to the investigation told French media that they planned to kidnap and behead a high-ranking member of the military whilst filming on a Go-Pro camera to share the footage on the internet.

The men had been planning to carry out their attack in January 2016, on the anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo massacre of 12 people. French police and the intelligence services continued to observe the men, but, over the weekend, decided to carry out their raids and subsequent arrests on Monday, in light of the risks of an attack on 14 July, when France celebrates Bastille day.

During the raids, police found no weapons, although officials did discover documents on preparing explosives, according to French News 24.

Police released the 16-year-old suspect this morning, after time limits for keeping him in custody ran out. The other three men, who are yet to be charged, have told police that the 16-year-old had been dropped from the plot, because he was too young.

France has remained high alert for terrorist attacks since the attack on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in January earlier this year, when a trio of gunmen killed a total of 17 people.

French President Francois Hollande, who last week called for an increase to security around various chemical sites in France, said that various attacks had been thwarted in recent days.

"This week, we stopped terrorist attacks which could have taken place," he said during a visit to Marseille.

Last month, an man attacked a gas plant near Lyon and killed his employer, the owner of a local road transport firm. 35-year-old Yassin Salhi decapitated his boss Herve Cornara, pinning his head to a nearby fence surrounded by flags with Arabic script.