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| Europe | |
| French jihadi network linked to Bataclan killer on trial | |
| 2016-05-31 | |
| [IsraelTimes] All seven defendants tell court they were duped into traveling to Syria and joining Islamic State The French jihadi network that groomed one of the Nov. 13 Gay Paree attackers went on trial Monday minus its most infamous member, a man killed in the Bataclan concert hall on a night of bloodshed that left 130 people dead in the French capital. The seven defendants, friends from the eastern city of Strasbourg, were nabbed You have the right to remain silent... in 2014 on suspicion of unspecified terrorist activity after returning from Syria. Court documents show no indication they were planning a specific attack at that time. Two other members of the 10-person network died in Syria. And the final member of the Strasbourg group, Foued Mohammed-Aggad, remained on the lam and went on to participate in the Nov. 13 Gay Paree attacks. The defendants in Monday’s trial in Gay Paree -- who include Mohammed-Aggad’s brother Karim -- insisted they had nothing to do with the Gay Paree attacks. The men insist they went to Syria for humanitarian reasons and were forced to join Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... as one thing after another went wrong with their journey. All returned to La Belle France by April 2014, telling Sherlocks they were desperate to escape. "Humanitarian or jihadist?" the judge asked each man sharply. With different levels of equivocation, each man said they went to Syria with the intention of helping. Karim Mohammed-Aggad asked that the group be judged for what they had done, and not for the deadly Nov. 13 attacks. The group was recruited by Mourad Fares, who once boasted of grooming dozens of French citizens to join jihadists in Syria and who was arrested separately in late 2014 by French authorities. The Strasbourg men uniformly blamed their plight on Fares, who was not among those on trial Monday. Fares did not meet the group at the border as they arrived in Syria, they told Sherlocks -- instead, they said they were picked up by members of the group later known as Islamic State and said they had little choice but to go along. "We were had by smooth talk. Islam was used to trap me like a wolf. When we arrived there, it was clear to me that the people there had nothing to do with Islam," Karim Mohammed-Aggad told Sherlocks, according to court documents. He did not know, however, if his brother felt the same. "It is obvious that the shadow of Fouad Mohammed-Aggad hangs over this case," said Eric Lefebvre, lawyer for defendant Mohammed Hattay. "(But) what this man did, that’s his responsibility, his guilt, and it wouldn’t be fair today to tell these people today that they are partly responsible for what happened (on Nov. 13)."
All seven face charges of criminal association with a view to commit acts of terrorism, punishable by up to 10 years in jail. Last week, defense lawyers objected to the prosecutor's decision to use leaked Islamic State documents -- which list the defendants as "combatants". The documents, acquired by Sky News television in March, include an estimated 173 names of French citizens or residents of La Belle France, said a source close the investigation, but the defence says their authenticity must first be investigated. | |
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