French Islamists Arrested Monday Linked to Iraqi Insurgency
Paris Le Figaro (Internet Version-WWW) in French 26 Jan 05
[Report by Jean Chichizola: "Four Recruiters for Jihad in Iraq Arrested"]
[Text] From the streets of Paris' 19th arrondissement to the inferno of
Al-Fallujah: in Paris and Val de Marne on Monday, policemen of the
Territorial Surveillance Directorate (DST) made the first arrests within the
context of the investigation into Iraqi Islamist networks. Three young
Islamists were arrested with close associates at their home in Paris, and a
fourth at Orly airport. Having returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca, the
latter was on his way to Syria, where he has been living in recent moths.
Not concealing his satisfaction at the neutralization of this Islamist cell,
a senior Interior Ministry official told Le Figaro yesterday that this
operation "would at last make it possible to gain a better understanding of
how it is that Parisian youngsters of 19 go to sacrifice themselves in
Iraq."
The groups to which the arrested suspects belong apparently comprises
radical Muslims of Tunisian and sub-Sahel origins and also several converts.
Investigators acted on a letter of request issued by antiterrorist judge
Jean-Louis Bruguiere, whom the Paris prosecutor's department put in charge
of the judicial inquiry launched 20 September 2004. The suspects, who are
being held at the DST, belong to a structure that recruited young
worshippers at the Adda'wa (sermon) mosque on Tanger street, in Paris' 19th
arrondissement. The searches carried out Monday resulted in the discovery
of Islamist documents.
This initial dragnet is the result both of the surveillance of radical
Islamist circles, which Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin ordered to
be stepped up following the Madrid attacks in spring 2004, and of the work
done in connection with networks sending volunteers to Iraq.
In recent months the 19th arrondissement has been the focus of the
inquiry into young Parisian Islamists identified back in 2003 who went to
Iraq last year. Linked to the individuals arrested by the DST Monday, four
of them have died in Iraq since July 2004 -- Redouane el-Hakim, 17 July;
Tarek Ouinis and a certain Karim alias Abou Salman, 17 September; and last,
Abdelhalim Badjoudj, 20 October. All of them had been recruited while
attending the Adda'wa mosque. They left for Damascus in 2004, officially
to attend courses in Arabic and to further their knowledge of the Koran at
the al-Fateh al-Islami institute, which is thought to have close links with
radical circles, before proceeding to Iraq. Redouane el-Hakim's brother,
Boubaker, 21, already known to the intelligence services and considered to
be the group's most committed member, is now under arrest in Syria, having
been apprehended on the Iraqi border in August.
According to the Interior Ministry, a dozen French citizens have entered
Iraq via Syria. Antiterrorist police and magistrates believe that these
are for the present isolated initiatives rather than a real organization
modeled on the Afghan, Bosnian, and Caucasian networks observed since 1995.
Nevertheless the trend has grown over the months.
Since 2003 the European police forces, and especially those of Germany
and Italy, have dismantled structures sending volunteers to Iraq. The
latest example was the arrest of two Islamists in Mainz (Germany) on Monday.
The first, of Iraqi nationality and a former jihadi in Afghanistan,
apparently recruited the second, a Palestinian of Libyan origin, to commit
suicide attacks [as published] in Iraq. Islamists have apparently tried to
recruit kamikazes in Belgium, Spain, and Scandinavia.
Back in 2002, the French and Italian judiciaries gathered information
about the departure for Iraq of Tunisian terrorists based in Italy and
identified on the Cote d'Azur. Arrested in Marseilles in October 2002 and
investigated in connection with the French inquiry into the Frankfurt group
(accused of having planned an attack on the Strasbourg Christmas market,)
Tunisian Lahzar Ben Mohammed Tlili told judges that two Islamists had left
Marseilles in September 2002 for Iraq via Syria.
According to Italian police, one of them, Rihani Lofti, died alongside
two other Tunisians in a suicide attack on US troops carried out in
September 2003. Less than a month later, the French Islamists of the 19th
arrondissement left France to take over from them.
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