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| Sixty-year-old French jihadist gets eight-year jail sentence | |
| 2015-05-16 | |
| [Ynet] A sixty-year-old Frenchie was sentenced to eight years in jail by a Gay Paree court on Friday for taking part in operations by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Northern Mali. Gilles Le Guen admitted joining the bad boy group but said he left it after a couple of months. "At some point I was enthusiastic but quickly pulled back," he said during his trial. The father of eight from Brittany was convicted of taking part in AQIM propaganda and training, as well as in an attack on Diabaly in Northern Mali.
The former member of the French merchant navy was enjugged Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please! by special forces in late April 2013. At the time, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian described him as a "drop-out who became a terrorist". In October 2012, Le Guen appeared in traditional Moslem robes with a gun at his side in a video on a Mauritanian website in which he warned La Belle France, the United States and the United Nations ...the Oyster Bay money pit... against military intervention in Mali to drive Islamists from the country's arid north. Le Guen, a former heroine addict with a drawn face, showed little emotion as the sentence was handed down. During his trial, he said he converted to Islam in 1982 but was opposed to any "application of Sharia law in a tyrannical fashion." He said he had been "instrumentalized" by AQMI, whose members he described as "turbans without anything to offer to the people." Despite voicing "religious admiration" for the later al-Qaeda leader the late Osama bin Laden ... who is now sometimes referred to as Mister Bones... , whom he compared to Che Guevara, he said he was against hostage-taking, suicide kabooms and declared himself "incapable of killing." Raised in a Catholic family, Le Guen converted to Islam at the age of 18 after a brief spell as a Hindu and "does not and will not pose -- when he gets out -- any danger for French and Western society," said his lawyer. | |
| Posted by:trailing wife |