Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

ISIS

Isis jihadist linked to French plot arrested in Morocco

A suspected Islamic State group jihadist who delivered instructions to a cell planning to carry out an attack in France has been arrested in Morocco, authorities said Saturday.

Published: 4 December 2016 10:23 CET

The suspect was linked with a French Isis cell that had planned to attack Paris on Thursday but was broken up by French authorities in November, the Moroccan interior ministry said.

The suspect had met Isis operatives on the Syrian-Turkish border and received instructions to be delivered to the cell in France, it charged.

The orders came from the jihadist group in territory it controls in Syria and Iraq.

French security services broke up the cell by arresting seven men in Strasbourg and Marseille on November 19 and 20, according to the French interior ministry.

The public prosecutor for Paris later said the men had been in contact with a commander in Iraq or Syria.

A year ago, Moroccan intelligence helped put French investigators on the trail of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 28-year-old Belgian of Moroccan origin who had appeared in grisly IS videos and was linked to a series of plots in Europe.

A study by the US-based Soufan Group said last December that at least 1,200 Moroccans had travelled to fight alongside IS in Iraq and Syria in the previous 18 months.

Morocco has also arrested eight men with alleged ties to IS active in the cities of Fez and Tangiers, the interior ministry said on Friday.

Ex-jihadi housewife jailed in Norway for joining IS

The Kurdish-run al-Hol camp which holds suspected relatives of Islamic State fighters.Photo: Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP

The Oslo court sentenced the Norwegian-Pakistani woman to three and a half years in prison for “participating in a terrorist organisation” by taking care of her household and enabling her three husbands to fight.

“By travelling to an area controlled by IS in Syria… by moving in and living with her husbands, taking care of the children and various tasks at home, the defendant enabled her three husbands to actively participate in IS fighting,” judge Ingmar Nilsen said as he read out the verdict.

Being a housewife to three successive husbands did not render her a passive bystander, the judge said.

“On the contrary, she was a supporter who enabled the jihad, looked after her three husbands at home and raised the new generation of IS recruits,” he said.

The young woman, who admitted having “radical ideas” at the time, left for Syria in early 2013 to join an Islamist fighter, Bastian Vasquez, who was fighting the regime.

Although she did not take up arms herself, she was accused of having allowed her husbands to go fight while taking care of her two children and household chores.

The trial was the first prosecution in Norway of someone who had returned after joining IS.

“This is a special case,” prosecutor Geir Evanger acknowledged during the trial.

“This is the first time that, to put it bluntly, someone has been charged for being a wife and mother.”

The prosecution had called for a four-year sentence, while the defence had called for her acquittal and immediately appealed Tuesday’s verdict.

The woman’s lawyer, Nils Christian Nordhus, argued that his client had quickly wanted to leave Syria after being subjected to domestic violence.

She had also been a victim of human trafficking because she had been held against her will, he added.

But the judge stressed that she had participated in the organisation “knowingly” and of her own will.

The woman was repatriated to Norway in early 2020 on humanitarian grounds with her two children, including a young boy described as seriously ill.

At least four other Norwegian women and their children are being held in Kurdish-controlled camps in Syria.

Url copied to clipboard!