“Five held in France for recruiting Iraq fighters,” from AFP, :
PARIS, April 28 (AFP) – Five suspected Islamic militants have been detained in France by intelligence agents who believe they were part of an operation to send volunteers to fight against the US army in Iraq, officials said Thursday.
The four suspects arrested Sunday in the Paris area and a fifth detained Monday in the southern port of Marseille were placed in preventive detention, sources close to the investigation said.
One of the five suspects, 39-year-old Moroccan national Said Al-Maghrebi, had been sought for months by several police forces across Europe.
They were arrested as part of an anti-terrorist investigation launched last September after evidence emerged of a so-called “Iraqi network” recruiting Islamic militants to fight US forces there.