A man who had luggage containing two firearms and ammunition was arrested Thursday at the entrance to a hotel near Disneyland Paris, and investigators are looking for a woman who was with him, police said.
The 28-year-old Paris man was arrested as he tried to go through security at Disney’s Hotel New York, just outside the Paris-area amusement park, said Michel Le Prevost, deputy chief of criminal police of the French city of Meaux.
The man also was carrying a Quran, Le Prevost said. He told police during questioning that he was carrying the guns for his own protection, according to the deputy chief.
Police also are looking for a woman who was with him, Le Prevost said. Police retracted an earlier statement that the woman was in custody.
It’s not immediately clear what, if anything, she was accused of.
The guns and ammunition were found when the luggage was put through an X-ray machine “during a routine security screening checkpoint at one of our hotels,” Disneyland Paris representative Francois Banon said.
“The police were immediately notified and the individual was arrested,” Banon said.
The Paris area has been on edge since two high-profile Islamist attacks last year: the killings of 17 people at the office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in Paris in January 2015, and the massacre of 130 people in shootings and suicide bombings in and near Paris in November.
Disneyland Paris is about 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of central Paris.
