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French football chief ‘very careful’ over threat against coach Deschamps

French football federation president Noel Le Graet said he was adopting a "very careful" approach after a photoshopped image of national team coach Didier Deschamps emerged accompanied by threats from Islamic State sympathisers.

Published: 1 November 2017 09:21 CET
French football chief 'very careful' over threat against coach Deschamps
France football coach Didier Deschamps. Photo: Franck Fife/AFP

France's Interior Minister Gerard Collomb “is taking care of it very directly and therefore I can't provide any more information. In any event we are very careful with what's been said,” Le Graet told a press conference
on Tuesday.

The French federation chief, who announced Deschamps had agreed to extend his contract until 2020, was reacting to a mocked-up picture depicting the former World Cup winner published by the pro-Islamic State Wafa Media Foundation.

According to experts, there is no proven and authenticated link between groups such as the Wafa Foundation and Isis or its official communication outlets.

Dozens of threats against events such as the World Cup, which takes place from June 14th to July 15th next year in Russia, are posted daily on social networks, including some against football stars.

The image of Deschamps, detected by the US-based monitor SITE Intelligence Group on October 27th, shows him chained up in an orange prison jumpsuit and being threatened with a gun.

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.

Published: 10 October 2020 08:57 CEST
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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