French jihadi network goes on trial over Paris attacks

PanARMENIAN.Net - The French jihadi network that groomed one of the November 13 Paris attackers went on trial Monday, May 30 minus its most infamous member, a man killed in the Bataclan concert hall on a night of bloodshed that left 130 people dead in the French capital, the Associated Press reports.

The seven defendants, friends from the eastern city of Strasbourg, were arrested in 2014 on suspicion of unspecified terrorist activity after returning from Syria. Court documents show no indication they were planning a specific attack at that time.

Two other members of the 10-person network died in Syria. And the final member of the Strasbourg group, Foued Mohamed-Aggad, remained at large and went on to participate in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks.

The defendants in Monday's trial in Paris — who include Mohamed-Aggad's brother Karim — insisted they had nothing to do with the Paris attacks, AP says.

The men insist they went to Syria for humanitarian reasons and were forced to join Islamic State as one thing after another went wrong with their journey. All returned to France by April 2014, telling investigators they were desperate to escape.

"Humanitarian or jihadist?" the judge asked each man sharply. With different levels of equivocation, each man said they went to Syria with the intention of helping.

Karim Mohamed-Aggad asked that the group be judged for what they had done, and not for the deadly November 13 attacks.

The group was recruited by Mourad Fares, who once boasted of grooming dozens of French citizens to join jihadists in Syria and who was arrested separately in late 2014 by French authorities. The Strasbourg men uniformly blamed their plight on Fares, who was not among those on trial Monday.