Converts Overrepresented Among French Jihadists

According to our information, nearly 40 French nationals who are recent Muslims have joined the war in Syria. 

Facts 

Converts make up roughly 1% of Muslims in France, but they are overrepresented among Salafi and jihadi groups. Authorities are worried about this but are proceeding with the utmost caution.

 

Nearly 40 French jihadists involved in the war in Syria are converts. "They make up 15 percent to 20 percent of a pool of 220 people whom we are monitoring," a source in intelligence circles confirmed to L'Opinion -- only 70 of these 220 Frenchmen are currently in Syria, while the other ones are coming back or preparing to come back. Converts are overrepresented in militant groups. While they account for hardly more than 1 percent of the Muslim population in France, they can be spotted almost systematically on all fronts, whether Salafi or jihadi. 

Well aware of the problem, authorities are proceeding with caution. "We must be careful not to confuse them with the vast majority of our Muslim fellow citizens," Interior Minister Manuel Valls cautioned on Monday [29 July] in an interview with Le Parisien. It is also out of the question to undercut religious freedom: Each citizen is free to convert to the religion of their choice without being exposed to public condemnation. The number of new Muslims in France is assessed to stand at around 100,000. The huge majority of them is motivated by a spiritual quest or family reasons. A very militant minority remains. "This is a hot and sensitive issue," a homeland security official admits. Recent events testify to this. 

On 18 July, police agents carried out an identity check in Trappes (Yvelines district) on a fully-veiled young woman wearing a niqab. The row went out of hand and violence marred the city for several nights. This young woman, whose first name is Cassandra, is a convert. She is of Caribbean descent and follows radical Islam, like her husband. He was not born in Islam either, even if his mother is of North African descent: 21-year-old Mikael, whom we saw on a local television channel sporting a beard, joined the Muslim religion at his own initiative. 

In 2010, a full-body veil had already sparked a controversy in Nantes with one of the wives of Lies Hebbadj, a young woman called Sandrine Moulieres, accused of disturbing public order. She told her militant story in a book called Les Boucs Emissaires de la Republique [The Scapegoats of the Republic] published by Michalon [French publisher]. These two cases, in Trappes and Nantes, deal with Salafism, not with armed jihadism, let alone terrorism. But we do come across converts in this field, too. 

"O Brother Francois Hollande [French president], do convert to Islam, escape the fires of hell, reject your Jewish and American friends, withdraw the troops from Mali." The young man addressing the president of the Republic with these words in a video recorded in Syria, and uploaded online in the beginning of July, used to be called Nicolas not so long ago. Wearing a military fatigue and holding a Kalashnikov in his hand, he is now Abu Abd Al-Rahman, "born to a French father and a French mother," both of them "atheists," as he points out himself. This young 30-year-old man, who comes from Toulouse, converted to Islam in 2009 after going through a rough patch. Along with his half-brother Jean-Daniel, 22 years old, he is now fighting with the jihadists against [Syrian leader Bashar] al-Asad's troops. 

Moving on to Afghanistan 

It was also Raphael Gendron's case. This 37-year-old IT engineer was killed early April in the north of Syria where he had gone to fight with the jihadists. Raised in Paris by his mother Martine although born to an Algerian father, he chose Islam in his teens before mingling with extremist circles in Belgium under the name Abdel Raouf. He was arrested in Italy in 2009 on suspicion of planning a terrorist attacks against the Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle airport. 

His background is close to Herve Loiseau's. Raised by his Catholic mother in Paris although born to a non-practicing Algerian father, the young man started following Islam during his military service and reclaimed his middle name Djamel. He became close to the GSPC [Salafist Group for Combat and Preaching] (which later became Al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb) and went on to fight alongside Bin Laden in Afghanistan where he was killed in the Battle of Tora Bora at the end of 2001… 

Jihad can sometimes take place in less exotic places. On 25 May, a French soldier was patrolling the RER [Paris commuter rail lines] station of La Defense as part of Vigipirate [French counterterrorism alert system] when he was suddenly stabbed by a young man. He was only lightly wounded but his assailant managed to escape. The police arrested him four days later in La Verriere (Yvelines district). The latter said he acted "on behalf of religious convictions." Going by the name Abelhak, his real name is Alexandre d'Haussy.  The son of engineer, he is a 22 year old gone adrift who embraced Islam in 2009 under the influence of the proselytizing movement Tabligh. This homeless man was spotted by the police after taking part in street prayers and refusing to meet women. This assault in La Defense took place against the backdrop of the war in Mali where the French army is fighting jihadi groups. 

Speaking of Mali, this is where we come across another French convert captured by special forces at the end of April. Breton Gilles Le Guen, who became Abdel Jalil, used to live in a tent north of Timbuktu. "He had fought with jihadi groups," Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said at the time. Le Guen, 58, who formerly worked for the merchant navy, comes across as an adventurer gone astray. He had married a Moroccan woman who gave him five children, with whom he was living in Mali, with the financial support of his mother who had settled in the Nantes region. He was transferred to France where he was charged with criminal association in connection with a terrorist enterprise,

 

"Extremely Dangerous" 

Jeremie Louis-Sidney, for his part, did not have the time to appear before a judge. He was killed by the police on 6 October 2012 who had come to arrest him, during a shootout in Strasbourg. This Melun-born Caribbean had converted when he was 17 and led a terrorist cell known as the "Torcy cell." Louis-Sidney was suspected of hurling a grenade in a synagogue [word as published] in Sarcelle, and of planning new actions. Another convert, Jeremy Bailly, 25, belonged to this group deemed "extremely dangerous" by the prosecutor. 

Further back in time, there is the case of Lionel Dumont, a member of the gang of Roubaix, which committed bank robberies in order to finance the Islamist cause. Born in a Catholic working-class family in 1971, he served with the French army in Djibouti and in Somalia. Upon his return to France, he converted to Islam and briefly enrolled to support the Bosniaks under the name Abou Hamza. While the gang of Roubaix was dismantled during an assault by the RAID [elite police assault unit] in March 1996, he escaped the police and fled abroad. He was arrested in 2003. He was convicted and is still in jail. Another member of the gang, Christophe Caze, was also a convert. 

We can also cite the case of David Courtailler, who was born in La Roche-sur-Foron (Haute-Savoie district), and arrested in 2004 as part of the dismantling of the Afghan networks, as well as the case of Pierre Robert, who was born near Saint-Etienne and was the member of a Moroccan terrorist group. He was jailed in this country after a series of terrorist attacks perpetrated in Casablanca in 2003. 

This is not a development restricted to France. The man who killed an English soldier in a street of London on 22 May was a Nigerian who converted to Islam. It was also the case of Nicole Lynn Mansfield, an American from Michigan, who was killed in Syria last May after swelling the jihadi ranks, probably those of Al-Nusra, a group close to Al-Qa'ida. Was she bracing herself for the same fate as the one that met Muriel Degauque, a young Belgian baker who blew herself up in a suicide attack in Iraq on 9 November 2005, killing five policemen?

 

Paris L'Opinion Online