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PARIS: A French court has sentenced 25 Muslims for planning attacks on the Eiffel Tower and other targets with explosives in support of rebels fighting Russian forces in Chechnya. The five main defendants, of Moroccan and Algerian origin, received prison terms of eight to 10 years, while the others received lesser terms for criminal association. Two were acquitted in a trial that prosecutors said had demonstrated the "globalisation of the jihad movement". Prosecutors at the six-week trial in Paris, which ended last month, said the group was planning to hit the Eiffel Tower, Paris's Les Halles underground shopping centre, police...

Bourget, 8 May (AKI) - Ahead of the French parliament's Tuesday vote on an immigration bill that will make it harder for foreigners to work in France, the Union of Islamic Organisations in France (UOIF) vice-president, Fouad Alaoui, has slammed the legislation, claiming it targets "Muslims in general," rather than extremists. "Right up until the 2007 presidential election, things are just going to get worse for Muslims," Alauoi said, quoted by French daily Le Monde. He was attending UOIF's annual meeting. UOIF's leadership contends that after creating the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) - of which UOIF is...

France's far-right political party, the National Front, has emerged stronger than ever from the civil unrest that has plagued the country in the past six months, a new survey shows, suggesting that the party could play a major role in the presidential election next year. The National Front's outspoken and vehemently anti-immigration leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has had occasional bursts of support before: four years ago, he made it to the runoff for president, losing to Jacques Chirac. But after riots by second-generation immigrant youth last fall, Mr. Le Pen's approval rating in polls surged five percentage points, to 21...

The resounding rejection of the EU constitutional project in France and the Netherlands has triggered much frenzied hand-wringing and anxious bickering about the future of Europe, though it appears to tells us more about the pervasive angst of the continent’s elites than about its future. Completely unnoticed in this noisy brouhaha is a survey in France that tells us more about what Europe’s future will look like than the collective wisdom of its chattering classes. Innocuously entitled “Signs and Manifestations of Religious Affiliation in the Educational Establishments” and headed by the inspector general of French education Jean-Pierre Obin, the study...

In five years' time, how many Jews will be living in France? Two years ago, a 23-year-old Paris disc jockey called Sebastien Selam was heading off to work from his parents' apartment when he was jumped in the parking garage by his Muslim neighbor Adel. Selam's throat was slit twice, to the point of near-decapitation; his face was ripped off with a fork; and his eyes were gouged out. Adel climbed the stairs of the apartment house dripping blood and yelling, "I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven." Is that an gripping story? You'd think so. Particularly...

One day last month, a young woman entered the Paris mobile phone shop where Ilan Halimi worked. She had no interest in a phone, according to police. She wanted to flirt with the 23-year-old salesman. She left with Halimi's phone number, and soon after, the two arranged a date. Last week, French police found Halimi -- the son of Jewish Moroccan immigrants -- near a railroad track in a southern Parisian suburb. His naked body was covered with cigarette burns and he was handcuffed. He died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. French police initially described the...

Anti-Semitism may have played a role in the torture and murder of a young Jewish man who was kidnapped and held for ransom, French authorities said Monday. Authorities found 23-year-old Ilan Halimi naked, handcuffed and covered with burn marks last Monday near railroad tracks in the Essonne region south of Paris. He died on the way to a hospital, officials said. Justice Minister Pascal Clement, speaking to reporters outside an annual meeting of France's main Jewish umbrella group, CRIF, confirmed investigators had alleged "aggravated circumstances of anti-Semitism." One 19-year-old suspect was placed under investigation - a step short of formal...

PARIS - The mother of Ilan Halimi, the 23-year-old Parisian Jew who was abducted, tortured and murdered by a gang in a suburb of the capital, accuses the police of missteps that led to her son's death. She revealed to Haaretz Sunday that the police told the family to ignore the gang's attempts to contact them for five critical days, after which Ilan was found near death outside the city. She also accuses the police of ignoring the anti-Semitic motivation in the case in order not to alienate Muslims. "If Ilan hadn't been Jewish, he wouldn't have been murdered," she...

LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH PARIS -- French authorities have begun closing down soup kitchens run by anti-immigrant groups that serve pork because the practice is offensive to Muslims, who cannot eat pork. In Strasbourg and Nice, food handouts have been banned because they could lead to "public disorder." "Schemes with racial subtexts must be denounced," Mayor Fabienne Keller said. In Paris, police have stopped charities from serving pork soup at major stations on "administrative grounds," claiming the soup kitchens do not have the correct papers.

France arrests gang suspected in killing of Parisian Jew By , Haaretz Correspondent PARIS - The French police arrested late Thursday night most of the members of the gang that abducted, tortured and murdered Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old Jew from Paris. Hundreds of SWAT officers raided apartments in Bagneux and arrested 12 people. Another suspect was arrested in Belgium. "They acted with indescribable cruelty," the judiciary police chief leading the investigation said. "They kept him naked and tied up for weeks. They cut him and in the end poured flammable liquid on him and set him alight."

French police launched a wide-range investigation on Tuesday after a twenty three-year-old Jewish man was kidnapped and murdered. Jewish community security services have said they suspect the crime may have been motivated by anti-Semitism. Ilan Halimi was found critically wounded, naked and hand-cuffed along a railway track in the suburb of Saint Genevieve des Bois, 30 kilometres south of Paris on Monday, three weeks after he was kidnapped by a gang in Paris. The victim, who was burnt and cut on 80 percent of his body, died of his wounds as he was taken to hospital. Series of crimes Judiciary...

The temperature on the street had dropped to minus three and the homeless stood in knots of two or three, blowing on their hands to relieve the bitter cold, as plastic bowls of steaming soupe au cochon were prepared.

Ilan Halimi, 23-year-old Parisian man, found tied to tree, naked, wounded, with burns covering his body; police arrest 13 suspects, say act not motivated by anti-SemitismThe French police arrested 13 people on suspicion of kidnapping, torturing and murdering Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old Parisian Jew. Halimi was found on Monday tied to a tree, naked and wounded, with burns covering all parts of his body. He died on the way to the hospital. Police officials said that the abduction and murder were apparently not motivated by anti-Semitism, but added that they have not yet discovered what led the group to commit...

PARIS -- 2006 could prove to be a very dangerous year for Europe, especially for France. Jacques Chirac may have thought that opposing America and Israel would keep France safe from terror, but it has not. Christmas Eve 1994, seven years before 9-11, Islamic terrorists from Algeria tried to fly an Airbus into the Eiffel Tower. They were stopped by French commandos at an airport in Marseilles, where the terrorists were waiting on a full load of jet fuel. They had already packed the plane with dynamite. Europe has lived under the threat of Islamic terror far longer than the...

France's law enforcement and prison system have been sharply criticised by Europe's human rights watchdog. The Council of Europe found prisons were overcrowded and police operated with a sense of impunity, according to excerpts from a report due next week. The council's human rights commissioner Alvaro Gil-Robles said there was a "widening gap" between the "text of law and what is actually practiced". The report makes 50 recommendations to improve France's record. They include faster and more effective access to legal assistance for detainees, separating convicts and people awaiting trial and shortening the maximum allowed 45-day solitary confinement. Details of...

France's top Muslim organisation is set to sue French newspapers that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), an umbrella organisation of Muslim groups, said on Friday it had taken the decision with the support of all its members after receiving lawyers' counsel. The council decided "to engage legal action against the newspapers that published the caricatures", it said in a statement after a closed-door meeting in Paris. Five French newspapers have published caricatures of the prophet that have created an international furore: dailies France Soir, Liberation, Le Figaro and Le Parisien, and...

French weekly reprints cartoons, angers Muslims Wed Feb 8, 2006 9:17 AM EST By Kerstin Gehmlich and Swaha Pattanaik PARIS (Reuters) - A French satirical weekly reprinted controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad on Wednesday and published one of its own on its front page, further angering Muslim groups which say the caricatures are blasphemous. French Muslim organizations tried to prevent Charlie Hebdo reprinting the 12 cartoons, which were first published by the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten, but a court rejected their suit on Tuesday on a technicality. President Jacques Chirac condemned "overt provocations" which could enflame passions, but did not...

President Jacques Chirac has asked media to avoid offending religious beliefs as a French newspaper today reprinted caricatures of the prophet Mohammed that have sparked violent protests in the Muslim world. Chirac said during a Cabinet meeting that he condemned “all obvious provocations likely to dangerously kindle passions”. “Everything that can offend the convictions of others – religious convictions in particular – must be avoided,” the French president said in remarks quoted by government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope. Earlier today, satirical French weekly paper Charlie-Hebdo reprinted the Mohammed drawings originally published by a Danish newspaper, as well as a new caricature...

Dozens of Palestinian gunmen on Sunday defaced the entrance to a French learning center and attacked a man who tried to protect the building in the latest Palestinian protests against caricatures of the Islamic prophet Mohammed published in European newspapers. In Nablus, about 30 gunmen arrived at the French cultural center planning to vandalize the building, but agreed, after negotiating with Palestinian police guarding the building, only to write on the building. They scrawled in black on the door an "X," "This place is closed" and "God is great." At one point an unidentified man tried to stop them, telling...

PARIS, Feb 4, 2006 (AFP) - France's main Muslim and anti-racist organisations said on Saturday they would seek to take legal action following the publication of controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. Leaders of the French Council of the Muslim Faith said after a meeting they had asked the organisation's "lawyers to examine possibilities of taking legal action against the publication of the cartoons." The anti-racist group MRAP also said it would sue French newspaper France-Soir for publishing the offending cartoons which it said amounted to "provocation and incitement to racial hatred". "This cartoon deliberately takes part in racist blend...