France: 2 Arrested Islamists Were Headed for Syria, Prosecutor Says

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/world/europe/france-2-arrested-islamists-were-headed-for-syria-prosecutor-says.html

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At least 2 of the 12 French Islamists arrested in raids on Saturday were planning to join jihadists fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and to recruit others to do so, a French prosecutor said Thursday. Five of the 12, all born in France and between the ages of 19 and 25, were released Thursday, but seven were kept in detention as the counterterrorist police continued to investigate a cell of Islamists that tried to blow up a kosher grocery store last month in Paris and had munitions, bomb-making equipment and a list of Jewish organizations in their possession. The prosecutor, François Molins, who called the group “extremely dangerous,” said two of them had visited Egypt and Tunisia recently, and said of the grocery bomb, “The intent was to kill.”