Mark Houser continues his series in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, with thanks to KAOSKTRL.
PARIS — Waiting for his train in a metro station named for the battle of Stalingrad, Moun R’Quibe spoke with pride of the men he considers heroes fighting in another bloody conflict — Iraq.
R’Quibe, 20, born in France of Moroccan parents, supports fellow Muslims willing to give their lives for jihad against the Americans.
“I would like to do it, God willing. I would like to do it, but my parents don’t want me to,” he said.
The high-rises here in Paris’ 19th arrondissement, a residential district in the city’s northeast where tourists rarely venture, are crowded with North African immigrants and their descendants along with native French. On narrow Rue de Tanger, across from a drab, concrete Catholic church, is the drab, concrete Addawa mosque.
French officials say it was in this mosque, and at later meetings in an apartment, that a jihad recruiter met with a group of young Muslims and convinced them to fly to Syria, sneak across the border, join the insurgency and pursue glory.
Three of them are dead — two were killed in battle and one blew himself up in an October car bomb attack that injured two American soldiers and two Iraqi soldiers. Three more were captured and are being held by the U.S. military.
In January, French police arrested their alleged recruiter, Farid Benyettou, and two other young men who were preparing to follow in their friends’ footsteps…
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