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HOLLANDE

Terror group repeats call for attacks on France

A jihadist group repeated its call for attacks on French soil as well as the assassination of President François Hollande in revenge for the European nation's recent interventions in Africa, terrorist monitoring group SITE said on Sunday.

Terror group repeats call for attacks on France
Soldiers patrol Paris in spring 2013 after a terror group called for attacks in the French capital. Those calls were repeated on Monday. Photo: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP

A jihadist group repeated its calls for French president François Hollande's assassination in revenge for the European nation's recent interventions in Africa, terrorist monitoring group SITE said on Sunday.

The al-Minbar Jihadi Media Network, a militant Islamist web site with ties to Al-Qaeda, says it wants Muslims to stage attacks in France and on French interests elsewhere in support of Muslims in Central African Republic and Mali.

"Supporting them is an easy matter for every honest and loyal person, because the embassies of France fill the lands of the Muslims, not to mention the lions of our Ummah who live in the West," it said in a message introducing the latest campaign, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.

On its online forum, it posted 22 posters, a video, an article, and a poem, adding to the campaign it began earlier this month urging terror attacks in France and for Hollande's killing.

"To our lone wolves in France, assassinate the president of disbelief and criminality, terrify his cursed government, and bomb them and scare them as a support to the vulnerable in the Central African Republic," the March 9th message read.

"Neither Hollande, nor his soldiers will know peace in France as long as the Muslims of Mali and the Central African Republic cannot live properly in their country," it said.

Hollande responded at the time, saying "this is not the first time that there have been threats," and "we are extremely vigilant."

France sent in troops to Mali in January last year to drive out Islamist militants and Tuareg rebels who had taken control of the desert north.

Although their onslaught on the south, where the capital Bamako is located, was halted, fighters loyal to Islamist groups still operate there and stage periodic attacks.

France has also sent around 2,000 troops to the Central African Republic in support of a 6,000-strong African Union peacekeeping mission following a wave of Muslim-Christian bloodletting in the aftermath of a coup.

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MEDIA

French president’s ex girlfriend says she has been sacked by magazine

Valerie Trierweiler, the ex-girlfriend of former French president François Hollande, said on Thursday that she had been sacked by Paris Match magazine.

French president's ex girlfriend says she has been sacked by magazine
Valerie Trierweiler wrote a tell-all book about the former president's affair. Photo: AFP

The journalist took revenge on Hollande for spurning her for actress Julie Gayet with a sensational 2014 kiss-and-tell memoir called Thank You for This Moment, which all but sank Hollande's presidency.

The book became an instant bestseller, and Hollande, a Socialist, never lived down his alleged references to the “toothless” poor.

Trierweiler, 55, had worked for the glossy weekly as a political correspondent, interviewer and columnist for three decades.

 

“I discovered in the middle of my summer holidays in an extremely brutal way that I have been sacked from Paris Match after 30 years,” Trierweiler said on Twitter.

“This sacking was for no reason and has left me shocked and astonished,” she added.

Trierweiler was famously admitted to hospital after Hollande's affair was revealed by paparazzi images of his nightly visits by scooter to Gayet's apartment.

The politician had tried to portray himself as a safe pair of hands “Mr Normal” in contrast to his mercurial predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy.

As well as spending most of her career at Paris Match, Trierweiler also interviews politicians for the French television channel Direct 8.

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