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French terrorist cell ‘biggest threat’ since 90s

A French prosecutor said Thursday he would pursue charges of attempted murder and terrorism against seven of the 12 suspected Islamist extremists arrested at the weekend.

François Molins, the Paris prosecutor, said the seven had been part of an "active terrorist cell" that posed the biggest threat of its kind that France has faced since the mid-nineties, when the Algerian-based GIA was dismantled.

The attempted murder charges relate to a grenade attack on a Jewish grocery store in the Paris suburbs last month.

The attack left one person slightly injured but Molins said the Yugoslav-made grenade had been capable of seriously injuring anyone within a ten-metre radius, indicating the consequences could easily have been much worse.

The prosecutor added that the profile of the suspects detained in custody was "much more dangerous than we initially assumed" and said the investigation had uncovered evidence they were planning to go on 'jihad' in Syria and other countries.

The grenade attack on a kosher grocery in Sarcelles, just outside Paris, triggered an investigation which led to Saturday's arrests.

One alleged leading member of the group, 33-year-old Jérémie Louis-Sidney, was shot dead after he opened fire on officers seeking to arrest him in a dawn raid at his home in Strasbourg.

Police have since discovered weapons and significant amounts of bomb-making equipment at the homes of some of the other men detained under anti-terrorism legislation.

Five of the 12 initially detained were released without charge on Thursday. 

The other seven are all French citizens, aged between 19 and 25, Molins said.

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IS

France charges jihadi with murder in IS territory

France on Friday charged a man with murder days after his expulsion from Turkey, holding him in custody over crimes alleged to have taken place in jihadist-controlled areas of Iraq and Syria.

France charges jihadi with murder in IS territory
People walk under a billboard erected by the Islamic State (IS) group as part of a campaign in the IS controlled Syrian city of Raqqa in 2014. Photo: Raqa Media Center / AFP
Using the pseudonym “Abou Salman al Faransi”, 26-year-old Othman Garrido is believed to have arrived in the region in 2012, where anti-terror prosecutors (PNAT) say he committed “murder in connection with a terrorist undertaking” and joined a “terrorist conspiracy”.
   
He is believed to have played an important role in and have information on the French jihadist scene.
   
A judge on Friday ordered him jailed provisionally after he spent the week in police custody.
   
“Based on photographs of abuses where he is visible”, Garrido “was likely involved in other murders in Iraq and Syria” being probed in a separate investigation, PNAT said.
 
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Prosecutors suspect him of three murders in total, although they have not been able to precisely date the crimes.
   
France has had an arrest warrant out since 2016 for Garrido, a native of southern city Montpellier.
   
Turkish forces captured him near the Syrian border in July, and handed him over under a Paris-Ankara deal covering the return of French jihadists.
   
A youth court sentenced Garrido in 2017 to 15 years in jail for joining the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria, where he trained and fought as well as attempting to incite violence by French Muslims.
 
   
After burning his French passport, Garrido urged Muslims to kill “infidels” in a seven-minute video distributed by IS' communications arm in 2014.
   
He was flanked in that recording by two other French jihadists using the pseudonyms Abou Ousama al Faransi and Abou Maryam al Faransi.   
 
Garrido's parents and two of his brothers have also received jailed sentences of 10 and 15 years. It is unclear whether his brothers, who also travelled to Syria, remain alive.
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