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| Europe |
| French Teen Jihadists Home to Face the Music |
| 2014-01-29 |
| [An Nahar] Two French school students who bravely ran away to fight in Syria were back home Tuesday with some explaining to do to their bewildered parents and teachers and the police. The two boys, aged 15 and 16, flew to Turkey on January 6 with the apparent intention of crossing the border into Syria and performing "jihad" or holy war alongside the thousands of imported muscle who have joined rebels battling Bashir al-Assad's government forces. The younger of the two succeeded in crossing the border but neither boy reached the front line, to the relief of anxious friends and family in Toulouse ...lies on the banks of the River Garonne, half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The Toulouse metropolitan area is the fourth-largest in La Belle France... , where they were both pupils at the Arenes Lycee, or high school. The 16-year-old arrived home on Sunday while the 15-year-old, whose repatriation was delayed by complications linked to his entering Syria, got back on Tuesday. The latter's father appealed to journalists to leave the family alone. "We need to rest, these are very difficult moments for us," he said. The pair face interrogation from police about how they came to be sufficiently radicalized to embark on such an adventure and the contacts they must have made in order to believe it was possible. According to Interior Minister Manuel Valls, as many as 700 Frenchies could have joined the fighting in Syria, with perhaps one fifth of the total accounted for by converts to Islam. Valls has described these Death Eaters as a ticking time bomb whose eventual return to La Belle France will present the country with a major security challenge in years to come. The case of the 15-year-old has been most surprising for his parents and teachers. Brought up in a devout Moslem family, he had never shown any sign of radicalism and had no history of trouble at school or with the police. The other boy was known to the police in connection with minor offences and comes from a family which includes several Islamist hardliners. He is suspected of having perhaps influenced his younger friend. |
| Posted by:Fred |