 French anti-terror judges Friday placed 11 suspected Islamic extremists under investigation for allegedly financing terrorism, part of a probe into a group suspected of using robberies to fund its plots.
| Yes! Yes! Pro-o-o-o-o-be them! |
Judicial officials said the 11 also were placed under investigation - a step short of being charged - for criminal association with a terrorist enterprise, a broad charge often used in France to detain terror suspects.
The 11 were among 25 suspects rounded up in police raids Monday. The 14 others were released without charge.
| Drat. Bring them back in. |
Agents arrested three other suspects Wednesday and seized guns, ammunition, dynamite and other weapons in a Paris suburb. Investigators believe the weapons were used to carry out robberies in France to finance jihad, or holy war.
Two suspects, who were not named, also face charges of attempted armed robbery and destruction of goods by explosives. Among those who appeared in court Friday was Ouassini Cherifi, a French-Algerian suspected of heading the group. Cherifi, 31, was convicted in 2002 of trafficking phony passports.
| I see whatever sentence he received, if any, went a long way toward changing his evil ways... |
Investigators are trying to establish a link between Cherifi and a March 2004 attack on a Brink's truck that yielded more than $1.2 million. The funds were allegedly meant to finance the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, an organization with alleged ties to al-Qaida that was blamed for the 2003 Casablanca attacks that killed 45 people, including 12 bombers.
| At the time, the name "Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group" never came up. It was Salafi Jihad, mostly... |
The officials said several of those arrested admitted during questioning to being involved in an Oct. 7 attempt to hold up an armored car in the town of Beauvais, north of Paris. French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and the national police chief, Michel Gaudin, have said the suspects have had links to al-Qaida in Iraq. Judicial officials, however, have cautioned the links tend to be more ideological than operational.
| I'd guess the operational links are more to whoever's killing people this week in North Africa... |
Separately Friday, a court in northern France handed down a 30-year prison term to Lionel Dumont, the alleged co-leader of a group of Islamic militants that terrorized the Lille region in 1996. Dumont, 34, was found guilty of three attempted homicides against police and other attacks in 1996. On the first day of his trial Dec. 5, Dumont told the court he did not relate to "the image of jihadist" presented by officials and the press. |