A French investigation into alleged payments to jihadist groups, including Islamic State, by French cement-making giant Lafarge in order to ensure the functioning of one of its plants in Syria is focussing on a fund of more than 15 million dollars set aside by the company for its operations in the war-torn country, according to documents obtained by Mediapart. Fabrice Arfi reports.
French defence minister Florence Parly has warned that the fight against the so-called Islamic State group, which has lost most of the territory it once controlled in Iraq and Syria, is far from over as it is re-organising itself into an underground terrorist network.
A Paris court on Friday sentenced Christine Rivière, 51, nicknamed 'Jihadi Granny', to a maximum ten years in jail for 'association with criminals preparing a terrorist attack' after she encouraged her son's activities within the ranks of the Islamic State group in Syria, where she later joined him on several occasions.
Senior French public prosecutor François Molins said the knife-wielding man who murdered two young women outside the central train station in Marseille on Sunday before being shot dead by patrolling soldiers in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group was of North African origin who used several false identities, and was released by police in Lyon on Saturday after his arrest for suspected shoplifting.
The so-called Islamic State group (IS) last week claimed responsibility for the attacks in Spain that left 15 people dead and more than 100 injured, part of a long and murderous terror campaign it has led across Europe. Behind the terrorist operations lies a branch of the IS which acts as the jihadists’ secret services, and which has been constructed in the image of the very countries it attacks. An eight-month investigation by Mediapart reveals the history and the methods employed by this shady organization that is a pillar of the IS structure. Matthieu Suc reports.
A French judicial investigation has been opened into alleged payments made by French-Swiss cement-maker LafargeHolcim to armed groups in war-torn Syria, including the Islamic State group, in order to keep a cement-producing plant operating in the country.
Rachid Kassim, who US and French authorities have said was killed in an air strike on Islamic State group positions near the beseiged city of Mosul last week, and who was suspected of coordinating terorist attacks in France, left an audi recording critical of the group's leadership for not taking part in front-line actions.
All 1,000 tickets for the November 12th concert by the British singer at the Bataclan, which reopens this Saturday for the first time since 90 people died when jihadist gunmen stormed a concert there last November, sold out within 30 minutes.
The French president, hosting an international conference in Paris to debate stabilisation of the Iraqi city once it is freed from control by the Islamic State (IS) group, said 'we can't afford mistakes' in the pursuit of IS members fleeing Mosul for the group's stronghold of Raqa in Syria.
The three Syrians, who police suspect were a 'sleeper cell', appear to have travelled via the same traffickers as three suicide bombers who blew themselves up near Paris in November 2015.
A French jihadist who enrolled in Syria with the al-Nusra Front, allied to al-Qaeda, speaks here about the reasons he left for the war-torn country, his life on the ground and what happened when he returned to France where he is now due to be tried on charges of helping to prepare a terrorist attack. In this, his first interview, the young Muslim convert tells Feriel Alouti: “I don’t minimize what I did but was I a threat to France at any given moment? I went there to help Syrians, not to kill French people”.
Anthropologist Scott Atran, a research fellow with Oxford University who also teaches at University of Michigan and John Jay College in New York, is a leading expert in the study of the motivations of those who join jihadist ranks and the rise of the Islamic State group, and advises governments and international organizations on the issue. In this interview with Joseph Confavreux, he argues that the draw of IS is widely misunderstood, is not limited to disenfranchised communities, and that the organization can only be overcome by a different military, political and psychological approach by Western nations.
