The five are accused of "providing logistical support to al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa."
An update on this story. "France Holds 5 Terror Suspects," by Jean-Pierre Verges for the Associated Press:
PARIS (AP) — French authorities held five men suspected of links to the al-Qaida branch behind a deadly bombing at U.N. offices in Algeria last week, a police official said Thursday.
The men, who are suspected of providing logistical support to al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, were rounded up for questioning Tuesday in the Paris area and near the Normandy city of Rouen.
Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility for twin truck bombings of the U.N. offices and an Algerian government building Dec. 11 that killed at least 37 people, including 17 U.N. staff members.
Three other men who were also detained Tuesday have been released, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The five men still in custody were being held at the headquarters of the DST counterintelligence service, the official said. The DST's operation was based on a request from an anti-terrorism judge who suspected the men of providing computers and telecommunications material to the Algerian terror group.
Police seized computers as they searched the men's homes, the official said. The suspects were North African and French. Le Figaro newspaper reported that the men, all in their 30s, had police records and had been under surveillance for months.
There was nothing to suggest the men had any direct involvement in the suicide bombings in Algiers, the police official said, adding that they were not suspected of planning attacks in France.
...I pray the French policemen can guard "suspects" better than the Pakistani ones do....
Global jihad marches on. But the mass of sympathizers, the enablers and facilitators are still out there, undiminished in number if not boldness. Jihadists swim in a Muslim ocean.
Ah-the Islamaniac man's burden-to bring death and destruction to the once colonial power.
"There was nothing to suggest the men had any direct involvement in the suicide bombings in Algiers, the police official said, adding that they were not suspected of planning attacks in France."
...Inspector Clouseau?......
Thats five out of how many thousand jihadist?
Note that these are not 'youths', they are adult men, in their 30s. Do they have families? If the case against them is proven - out they should go, they and their families, never to return, never to be permitted into any other Infidel-majority country.
I wonder which mosque, or mosques, they attend? If they are associated with any mosque, or mosques, I hope the French are searching said mosque - AND the house of the imam - from attic to basement, not forgetting to check for false floors and false ceilings, and not forgetting the use of sniffer dogs and metal detectors. I hope a team of forensic accountants are going through the finances not only of the captives, but of their mosque/s.
Perhaps it is time that if any mosque is found to have been regularly attended by anyone demonstrated to have engaged in Jihad plots, and further, if sermons preaching jihad and the overt or covert imposition of sharia have been regularly given there, then said mosque will be shut down and the buildings, land and assets confiscated, proceeds to be used to fund further anti-jihad operations.
When the practice of a religion amounts to preaching the violent overthrow of the society into which it has entered, along with active attempts to carry out such insurrection; when it explicitly, gloatingly contemplates the political subjugation and physical, sexual, economic and intellectual abuse of those who do not follow its tenets; and when it teaches the flagrant violation of human rights; then that religion should not be protected, any more than we would 'protect' the religious practice of somone who wished to sacrifice their child to Moloch or cut out hearts on top of a pyramid a la the Aztecs.