[Ynet] The French jihadist who perpetrated the 2012 attack in Sarcelles, injuring one, is to serve 28 years behind bars; prosecution describes decision as 'a miracle'.A French jihadist who threw a grenade at a Jewish store in 2012
| ...that would be the Naouri kosher supermarket... |
| When its members were arrested in late 2012, the "Cannes-Torcy cell" was described as the most dangerous jihadist group in France. |
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
bad boy group has its base.
The convictions in a late night ruling on Thursday brought a close to an affair that predated the spate of Islamist-inspired attacks in La Belle France from early 2015 onwards, in which more than 230 people have been killed.
| France was at the time roiled by protests against Israel and naturally also attacks on local Jews and Jewish institutions. |
The grenade-attack at a Jewish food store in Sarcelles
| ......known as "Little Jerusalem" because of the large number of North African Jews who settled there after immigrating in the 1960s, as did a large number of non-Jewish North Africans. They have on occasion clashed... |
The dismantling of the cell allowed police to thwart another attack planned against an army camp in the Var area of southern La Belle France in 2013, prosecutors said.
They added that the cell, half of whose members were converts to Islam who bonded on a camping holiday in Cannes, southern La Belle France, had also planned but not executed an attack on a McDonald's fast-food restaurant.
In all, the trial concerned 20 people. Two were acquitted. Among others sentenced was a 23-year-old Laotian man who was judged as the driver of the car from which Bailly hurled the grenade. He was enjugged
Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out!
for 18 years.
Among others sentenced but not present in court were a man who joined the Islamic State bad boy group in Syria and thought to have possibly died there, and another on the run in Africa.
| The Times of Israel adds: |
During the hearing at a special anti-terror tribunal in Gay Paree, the cell was described as "the missing link" between the self-proclaimed al-Qaeda terrorist Mohammed Merah -- who murdered three Jewish children and a teacher in an attack at their school in the southwestern city of Toulouse
...lies on the banks of the River Garonne, half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The Toulouse metropolitan area is the fourth-largest in La Belle France...
in 2012 -- and the Islamic State network that hit the Bataclan concert hall in 2015, killing 130 people.
The prosecution demanded "exemplary punishments" for the cell, headed by Jeremie Louis-Sidney and described as a violent leader with a "boiling" hatred for Jews.
Kevin Phan, the group’s driver during the attack, was sentenced to 18 years in jail.
Sentences of 14 to 20 years’ imprisonment were given to gang members who had traveled to Syria, including Ibrahim Boudina, who spent sixteen months in Syria and was accused of "returning to commit an attack" on the Cote d’Azur.
Lawyers said the court had noted the diverse profiles of the twenty men, some of whom were from well-to-do families, and came from Algeria, Laos and La Belle France. Half were converts to Islam.
The highest court in France on Wednesday rejected a bid by George Soros, the billionaire investor, to overturn a conviction for insider trading in a case dating back nearly 20 years, leaving the first blemish on his five-decade investing career.