PARIS, Sept 19 (AFP) - French police probing a ring that allegedly recruited Muslim fighters for the anti-US insurgency in Iraq arrested six men in the Paris area Monday, an official close to the investigation told AFP. The suspects were aged in their 20s and 30s, the source said without identifying them further. He did not say where exactly the arrests took place. | "Ye filthy ink-stained scribes don't need that scuttlebutt. Yarr!" |
The swoop was organised by France's counter-espionage agency, the DST, as part of a year-long investigation carried out with the intelligence-gathering unit of the police under instructions from three anti-terrorist judges, Jean-Louis BruguiÚre, Jean-François Ricard and Philippe Coirre. French authorities believe young immigrants from Muslim north Africa were enlisted to join the ranks of the rebels in Iraq often on an individual basis in prayer rooms or through family members.
Eleven people were arrested in Paris in January and three of them remain in detention pending criminal probes against them for criminal association with a terrorist enterprise. France has recently stepped up its cooperation with EU partners and Middle East countries to identify would-be insurgents on its territory and place them under surveillance.
According to officials, three French citizens fighting US-led forces were killed in Iraq last year and three others have been arrested. | "String em up from the yardarm! Arrrrr!" |
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