French Islamic convert captured in Mali

PanARMENIAN.Net - A French Islamic convert who threatened his home country has been captured in northern Mali, allegedly after fighting on the militants' side, BBC News reported.

French troops captured Gilles Le Guen, who now goes by the name Abdel Jelil, on Sunday, April 28 night north of Timbuktu, the army said. Le Guen, 58, is believed to have been living in Timbuktu.

France's Defense Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said he appeared to have fought alongside Islamist militants.

Some reports suggest he joined the al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) group, which the French army is fighting in the area, but the same group held him prisoner for a few days in November.

A month earlier, he had appeared in an Islamist video, his face uncovered and a gun by his side, to warn France, the U.S. and the UN against intervening in Mali.

Shortly before France deployed troops to fight Islamists in the west African state in January, he told French news magazine L'Express by phone: "I am following the road traced by Osama bin Laden."

Since the intervention began, six French soldiers have been killed.

Le Drian told Europe 1 radio Le Guen had "evidently already fought in jihadist groups". He was captured by French troops on patrol, he said.

The detainee would, he said, be handed over to the Malian authorities and "probably expelled to France".

No charges had been drawn up but an investigation was under way, Le Drian added.

Describing the detainee as a "loser who became a terrorist", the defense minister said the number of French citizens joining the ranks of the Islamists in the Sahel region could be counted "on the fingers of one hand".

Le Guen, a former merchant seaman, is originally from the city of Nantes in western France. He converted to Islam in 1985 and lived in Mauritania and Morocco before settling in Mali with his Moroccan wife and his family in 2011.