I posted this a few days ago.
(NO links)
FRENCH INVESTIGATE 3RD IN SUSPECTED NETWORK
Orlando Sentinel, The (FL) - January 30, 2005
PARIS — French judicial authorities Saturday began a criminal probe of a third man in an investigation of a suspected network that sent Islamic combatants to Iraq, officials said. Cherif Kouachi was placed under investigation for “criminal association with a terrorist enterprise,” judicial officials said. Kouachi, 23, is suspected of volunteering to travel to Iraq to fight against U.S.-led coalition forces. A day earlier, two others — suspected recruiter Farid Benyettoun, 23, and Thamer Bouchnak, 22, a suspected volunteer fighter — were also placed under investigation and detained.
Paris court convicts 7 men linked to Iraq recruitment cell, 3rd Ld-Writethru, EU
Associated Press News Service, The - May 14, 2008
Author: AP; DEVORAH LAUTER Associated Press Writer
PARIS (AP)
(snip)
Investigators said the network funneled about a dozen French fighters to camps linked to the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. They say the network sought to send more recruits before al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2006. At least seven French insurgents have died in Iraq, some in suicide bombings, police say. Of them, three were linked to the Paris group.
(snip)
Such trials are delicate for European countries that fear too-tough sentences risk radicalizing moderate Muslims.
One of the defense lawyers, Martin Pradel, said Wednesday’s sentences went too far.
Pradel said the court had no material evidence linking the men to a terrorist cell other than “the proclamation of their Muslim faith.” He said all seven men frequented the same mosque.
Speaking to The Associated Press, he contended that the defendants’ religious beliefs were “decisive” in the conviction. “I find that poses a real problem in a democracy,” he said.
Prosecutor Jean-Julien Xavier-Rolai, who had sought harsher sentences, said he may appeal.
Judge Jacqueline Rebeyrotte singled out ringleader Farid Benyettou, a 27-year-old janitor-turned-street-preacher, calling him “the ideologue and one of the organizers of a group whose objective was to send young people from the 19th arrondissement of Paris to fight in Iraq.”
The men were linked to the “19th arrondissement network,” named for the Paris district where Benyettou preached. The multi-national, working-class neighborhood includes many Muslim families with roots in one-time French colonies in North Africa.
The judge said Benyettou recruited young men from the neighborhood for jihad, or holy war, through his extremist religious teachings and by arranging weapons training and travel through Syria to get to Iraq.
Benyettou said during the trial that the case against him was an affront to his freedom of speech and that some of his statements to police were made under duress.
When the judge sentenced him to six years in prison, Benyettou nodded silently in acceptance.
The other defendants present accepted their sentences with little or no visible emotion, and were quickly taken away by police guards after the verdict was pronounced.
Boubakeur el-Hakim, 24, whose brother was killed in Iraq and who urged his Paris neighbors to come to Iraq in a French radio interview from Baghdad in 2003, was given a seven-year sentence, as was 40-year-old Moroccan Said Abdellah.
Algerian Nacer Mettai, 37, accused of forging documents for the potential fighters, was sentenced to four years in prison.
Mohammed el-Ayouni, Thamer Bouchnak and Cherif Kouachi - all 25 years old - were given three-year sentences, 18 months of which were suspended.
El-Ayouni, who said he was motivated by his outrage at television images of torture of Iraqi inmates at the U.S. prison at Abu Ghraib, lost an arm and an eye in Iraq. Bouchnak and Kouachi, a pizza deliverer, were arrested days before they planned to travel to Syria in January 2005, allegedly to train for Iraq.
Defense atty for Cherif Kouachi who created the painting: Vincent Ollivier
Original 2005 Mark Houser article:
“Ollivier admitted that his client told other militants they should attack Jewish interests in France. But he said that was a front Kouachi put up to look brave.
Besides, he said, what Kouachi was planning was no different than what many in the West did in the 1930s, when they joined the international brigades to fight Gen. Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War.
Ollivier decorates his office with art he makes from painted plywood and found objects. In one piece, black plastic crocodiles creep out of a pond and advance on a crucifix. It represents the end of Western Civilization and Christianity, he said.
“I’m like everybody else,” Ollivier said. “I’m worrying about it and waiting for it, for Armageddon. But ... we can’t avoid all our democratic laws. The way we are fighting terrorists is very dangerous because we are forgetting all our rules.” “
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Yesterday Pittsburgh Trib article referencing orig 2005 article:
http://triblive.com/news/adminpage/7523279-74/kouachi-houser-lawyer