Tag Archives: France

The father of the self-professed al Qaeda gunman Mohamed Merah is suing French authorities for murder. Officers from an elite police unit had entered his apartment after a 32-hour siege and killed him when he opened fire on them.

President Hollande said France would pull 2,000 soldiers out of Afghanistan by the end of 2012, leaving 1,300 in country to help with equipment repatriation and training of Afghan troops. Defending France’s “sovereign decision” to withdraw from the NATO mission a year early, he said France would help Afghanistan in other ways, such as assisting […]

President Hollande said France would pull its troops out of Afghanistan at the end of 2012, two years ahead of schedule. He said a “residual” number of troops would stay to provide training and help return equipment.

The finance ministry froze the assets of Mohammed Hammami, a radical Tunisian cleric whom France seeks to deport for making “violently anti-Semitic remarks” and advocating that women who commit adultery be flogged to death. The interior ministry is in the process of deporting other radical Islamist clerics as well.

Adlene Hicheur, 35, an Algerian-born particle physicist at the Cern laboratory, has been sentenced to five years in prison for plotting al Qaeda attacks in France. He had engaged in e-mail conversations with alleged al Qaeda operative Mustapha Debchi, and was suspected after threats were sent to President Sarkozy in 2008.

Intelligence officials arrested 10 suspected Islamic extremists in raids in Marseilles, Valence, and Roubaix. The suspects were planning to go to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and West Africa to fight; some had traveled to those areas before. Forsane Alizza leader Mohamed Achamlane has been imprisoned. Interior Minister Gueant said, “The pressure on radical Islam and the threats […]

Investigations began of 13 members of the banned group Forsane Alizza on suspicion of terror activities that included plotting to kidnap a Jewish judge in Lyon. A Malian imam and an Algerian militant were deported and further deportations of known Islamists, including a Saudi imam, a Turkish imam, and a Tunisian militant, are planned.

A French intelligence official said that several of the 17 terror suspects arrested in recent sweeps, including members of the banned group Forsane Alizza, may have been planning a kidnapping. A member of the Jund al Khilafah claimed in an Internet posting that Toulouse gunman Mohamed Merah had joined the terror group in Pakistan.

The trial began of a Franco-Algerian nuclear physicist, Adlene Hicheur, suspected of involvement with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb; he had discussed European targets, including a French military base, with an AQIM operative. Willy Brigitte, a French Muslim convert sentenced to nine years in jail in 2007 for plotting to attack an Australian nuclear […]