AA French court on Friday sentenced a 60-year-old man to eight years behind bars for fighting alongside an al-Qaeda group in Mali, reports NDTV. The Paris criminal court handed down the sentence to Gilles Le Guen - the first conviction under a law passed at the end of 2012 allowing authorities to prosecute those suspected of waging Jihad abroad. Le Guen was accused of taking part on the assault by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) on the town of Diabali in January 2013
The former member of the French merchant navy was arrested by special forces in late April 2013. At the time, defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian described him as a "drop-out who became a terrorist". In October 2012, Le Guen appeared in traditional Muslim robes with a gun at his side in a video on a Mauritanian website in which he warned France, the United States and the United Nations against military intervention in Mali to drive Islamists from the country's arid north.
