Nearly 1,000 French citizens involved in jihad: Interior Minister

PanARMENIAN.Net - About 930 France’s residents and citizens, including 60 women, are either already fighting in Iraq and Syria or are planning to go there, the country’s interior minister said. Dozens of women and children were stopped on their way there, RT said.

“930 French citizens or foreigners usually resident in France are today involved in jihad in Iraq and Syria,” France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told Le Journal du Dimanche. According to Cazeneuve, at least 350 people “are on the ground, including 60 women.”

Also, at least 36 have already died fighting alongside the ISIS jihadists. These numbers are not included in the 930 figure, he added.

There are those who “claim to have left on a humanitarian mission,” said the minister, adding that this is not true as French authorities “have reliable information that they fought in jihadist ranks.”

Cazeneuve added that “at least 70” French citizens and residents were stopped from leaving to Iraq and Syria after the country’s government received around 350 alerts about alleged jihadists. Among those who were stopped on their way to jihad were 80 children and 150 women.

Earlier, a parliamentary report stated that about 950 people are fighting within the Islamic militants. Among them 350 are already fighting there, 150 are on their way to war-torn zones, 180 came back to France from Syria and Iraq and 220 are planning to depart, French media reported.

In June, the authorities arrested Mehdi Nemmouche, a 29-year-old French citizen wanted in connection with the shooting in Brussels’ Jewish museum in May.

“The perversity of the terrorist jihadist system means that you do not necessarily have to receive a mission to carry out a terrorist act,” said Cazeneuve, answering a question by Le Journal du Dimanche about Nemmouche.

“When people are psychologically destroyed by daily acts of extreme violence, decapitations or other acts of barbarism, all their moral values fall, all their points of reference are wiped out,” he added.

In July France introduced stricter anti-terrorist legislation amid growing concerns that its nationals are fighting abroad alongside Islamic militants.

Individuals who are suspected of terrorism will be banned from traveling abroad for up to six months. The passports of the suspects may also be confiscated for some time or invalidated. "The objective of this bill is to increase the number of hurdles to discourage those who want to go and to stop them [from] actually going," the Interior Minister said.