- Title: FRANCE/FILE: Exodus of French volunteers for Syria jihad growing, judge says
- Date: 14th February 2014
- Summary: PARIS, FRANCE (FEBRUARY 12, 2014) (REUTERS) FRENCH ANTI-TERROR JUDGE MARC TREVIDIC WITH JOURNALISTS (SOUNDBITE) (French) FRENCH ANTI-TERROR JUDGE MARC TREVIDIC SAYING: "There has been a very obvious accelerator, which is that the first generation of recruits have come back home to fetch their buddies. The first ones who left had no contacts. Those who integrated Katibas (combat units) and who made contact with emirs, then come back to Europe, go fetch their buddies, and bring them to the emir and to the Katiba. That's the reason why their number exploded at some point, when the first generation came back home."
- Embargoed: 1st March 2014 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: France
- City:
- Country: France
- Topics: War / Fighting,Politics
- Reuters ID: LVADY2J4RE4MFQ1BITBPCJRNXCNS
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- Story Text: Growing numbers of French youths are leaving to fight with Islamist rebel groups in Syria, a top anti-terror judge said as several Western European countries are struggling to contain a trend that has seen as many as 2,000 youths travel to Syria to combat President Bashar al-Assad's government since a rebellion started nearly three years ago.
With Europe's largest Muslim population, France has become a major centre for recruitment and judicial authorities are grappling with a fresh wave of adolescent volunteers, some of whom are as young as 15 years old.
In July 2013, a young French man converted to Islam posted a propaganda video on a social media website, calling for holy war. Speaking in French in front of a black flag proclaiming allegiance to Allah, the man who called himself Abu Abd Al-Rahman was a 30-year-old convert coming from a middle-class background in Toulouse (south of France), and whose real name was Nicolas Bons.
"I am your brother Allah Abu Abd Al-Rahman, I am French, my father is French and my mother too, my parents are atheists; they do not subscribe to any religion, and Allah guided me, and I converted to Islam almost three years ago," he said in the video.
"Oh my brothers of France, of Europe, of the whole world, inshallah, jihad in Syria is mandatory," he added.
French anti-terror judge Marc Trevidic said that the services offered to parents who suspect their children are becoming radicalised were not sufficient and that new solutions were needed.
"Things are getting worse. So we have to invent new things, we have to try to treat the causes. That is, when alarm bells ring, when parents contact the authorities, that one could go to a dedicated mediator, to someone who would be able to take responsibility for the kid, to tell him that he should not leave, that Islam doesn't require from him to go fighting at the other end of the planet. It's obvious that this needs to be done. So far, we have only relied on anti-terrorist justice, this means on crackdown only, and that's a failure. It's an obvious observation, it's a failure," Trevidic said.
Nicolas Bons blew himself up in a suicide attack in December in Homs, Syria, with a car bomb which exploded near a primary school and killed eight people.
"Allah has guided me through Islam and the noble Koran, I found all the answers, only the blind don't want to seen," he said in the video.
Trevidic, who is specialised in counter-terrorism and Islamist radicalisation, said the recent increase in the number of youths leaving for Syria could be explained by the return of a first wave of volunteers who have come back home to fetch their friends and step up a recruitment drive.
Nicolas Bons appears in the video next to his half-brother Jean-Daniel, 21, who went with him to Syria to fight. He was killed in clashes in Aleppo, Syria, less than a month after the video was published.
Nicolas explained in the video that he and his brother watched several propoganda videos.
"We watched many videos of the mujahideen in Afghanistan. We have listened a lot to the Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, and Allah has given us the love in our hearts for the mujahideen and for the jihad," he said.
Abdullah Azzam was a Palestinian who led Islamic militants in Afghanistan and was killed in 1989 and who is regarded as the one-time spiritual mentor of former al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
French President Francois Hollande revealed in January that French intelligence services believed than more than 700 French nationals and residents had travelled to fight in Syria, a number that appeared to contradict an earlier estimate from his interior minister of around 250.
"A number of young French and young foreigners living legally in France are leaving for Syria to fight. 700 have been numbered. It is a lot. Some died. I still have in mind the testimony of a mother, who lost two of her relatives, two of her children. So we must also warn them, and fight against a number of networks which support terrorism," Hollande said.
Trevidic said the discrepancy was between the number of French citizens known to be fighting in Syria and the larger number of people passing through France on their way to Turkey, which shares a border with Syria.
"It is a mixture of radicalisation, that already existed, and ease. That is what makes some very young people turn the corner. They would not have the idea of going to Yemen or Waziristan at the age of 15 or 16," he told Reuters.
The judge also said he was in favour of stopping recruits who plan to join Islamist groups in Syria from leaving France.
Three young French men were arrested in May 2012 as they were preparing to fly to Turkey and appeared in court in Paris on February 4, for questioning.
While he did not see an immediate risk of terror acts in France, he said the prospect would become imminent in the medium term as combatants grew discouraged at the idea of an Islamic state ever being founded in Syria.
He criticized the idea of stripping Syrian combat volunteers of their citizenship, as the British government has recommended, because that would lead to creating a stateless group more prone to attacking Western governments. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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