23rd November, 2018
A French Court has handed a 10-year prison sentence to a man who travelled to Syria and joined the Islamic State Extremist Group, Prosecutors in Paris said on Friday.
The Paris Court of Assizes found Mohammed Reda Ouharani guilty of travelling to Syria to join Islamic State, undergoing military and religious training and participating in the group’s activities.
Ouharani, a French national born in Algeria in 1991, also travelled to Lebanon with the intention of carrying out a suicide attack against members of the Shiite Muslim community, the court found.
After his return to France, he stayed in contact with Islamic State handlers and suggested carrying out an attack in France.
Islamic State has claimed credit for most of the terrorist attacks that killed no fewer than 230 people in France in 2015 and 2016.
The group, which has now lost almost all the territory it controlled in Syria and Iraq has repeatedly called on its supporters abroad to carry out attacks against civilian and military targets, often singling out France.