France Arrests 10 People in Suspected Jihadist Network

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/world/europe/france-raids-arrests-jihadists.html

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PARIS — The French authorities arrested 10 people on Monday in a series of raids aimed at dismantling a recruitment and transportation network for would-be jihadists wanting to reach Syria, government officials said.

The arrests came amid worries in Western Europe that jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq, especially the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, have grown increasingly effective at attracting foreign-born fighters.

Agnès Thibault-Lecuivre, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office, declined to provide details about the arrests but said they were made on charges of “conspiracy to prepare acts of terrorism.”

In a statement congratulating police and intelligence services for the operation, Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, called the disrupting of jihadist networks an “absolute priority” for police and judicial authorities. He said that over 100 judicial proceedings involving nearly 500 people were currently underway.

Last month, the Paris prosecutor said that over 1,100 French citizens had been linked to fighting in Syria or Iraq, including those planning to leave, those in transit, those currently on the ground with jihadist groups, or those who had already returned to France.

“There has been a considerable increase of the number of those who leave, 82 percent since the beginning of 2014,” Mr. Cazeneuve said.

Ms. Thibault-Lecuivre said the raids on Monday were conducted in several regions across France but were focused on a network based around the southwestern city of Toulouse. She said that the investigation that led to the arrests was opened in December 2013 by judges in Paris.

“A preliminary investigation had been opened at the end of July 2013,” Ms. Thibault-Lecuivre said, after a father had told the police of his concerns about his son’s turn to radical Islam. While she declined to provide details about that family, Ms. Thibault-Lecuivre said that the subsequent investigation had helped the police close in on the recruitment network.

Speaking to Agence France-Press in Graulhet, a town about 35 miles east of Toulouse, the Moroccan mother of two of the men arrested on Monday defended her sons and said they had nothing to do with radical Islam.

The mother, who was not identified, said that her younger son was a forklift operator and that the older one had a “European” lifestyle and worked for the aircraft manufacturer Airbus in Toulouse.

“Those who go to war in order to go to heaven, we know they will end up in hell,” she told the news agency. “I did not educate my children that way. The real Quran that I learned about in Morocco does not ask you to go kill people.”

France is participating in the United States-led airstrikes in Iraq against the Islamic State and has been singled out by the militant organization as a critical enemy. Last month, an Islamic State propaganda video showed three French fighters calling on Muslims in France to carry out attacks on French soil or to join the group’s fight in Iraq and Syria.

France also recently adopted legislation that allows the authorities to confiscate passports and identity cards of French citizens suspected of wanting to join jihadist groups abroad.