France tries five for holding reporters hostage in Syria

By AFP/Marie Dhumieres

Five men went on trial in France on Monday charged with holding four French journalists hostage for the Islamic State jihadist group in war-torn Syria more than a decade ago.

IS emerged in 2013 in the chaos that followed the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, slowly gaining ground before declaring a caliphate in large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

The jihadists abducted a number of foreign journalists and aid workers before US-backed forces eventually defeated the group in 2019.

Reporters Didier Francois and Edouard Elias, and then Nicolas Henin and Pierre Torres, were abducted 10 days apart while reporting from northern Syria in June 2013.

The journalists were held by the IS group for 10 months until their release in April 2014.

They were found blindfolded with their hands bound in the no-man's land straddling the border between Syria and Turkey.

More than a decade later, jailed jihadist Mehdi Nemmouche, 39, is among five men accused of their abduction at a trial to last until March 21.

Nemmouche is already in prison after a Belgian court jailed him for life in 2019 for killing four people at a Jewish museum in May 2014, after returning from Syria.

"I was never the jailer of the Western hostages or any other hostage, and I never met these people in Syria," Nemmouche told the Paris court, breaking his silence after not speaking throughout the Brussels trial or during the investigation.

All four journalists told investigators they were sure Nemmouche, then called Abu Omar, was their jailer.

'Self-centred fantasist'

Henin, in a magazine article in September 2014, recounted Nemmouche punching him in the face and terrorising Syrian detainees.

He described him as "a self-centred fantasist for whom jihad was finally an excuse to satisfy his morbid thirst for notoriety. A young man lost and perverse".

The journalists told investigators Nemmouche was an avid follower of news and a French crime show called "Bring in the accused", who would quiz the detainees on their general knowledge or imitate famous French comedians.

He would also threaten to slit their throats, and once left a dead body outside their door to scare them.

Nemmouche, whose father is unknown, was brought up in the French foster system and became radicalised in prison before going to Syria, according to investigators.

Also in the dock are Frenchman Abdelmalek Tanem, 35, who has already been sentenced in France for heading to fight in Syria in 2012, and a 41-year-old Syrian called Kais Al Abdallah, accused of facilitating Henin's abduction.

Both have denied the charges.

Two defendants believed dead

Belgian jihadist Oussama Atar, a senior IS commander, is being tried in absentia because he is presumed to have died in Syria in 2017.

He has already been sentenced to life over attacks in Paris in 2015 claimed by IS that killed 130 people, and Brussels bombings by the group that took the lives of 32 others in 2016.

French IS member Salim Benghalem, who was allegedly in charge of the hostages, is also on trial though believed to be dead.

Governments have said hundreds of Westerners joined extremist groups in Syria.

Two US journalists, James Foley and Stephen Sotloff -- with whom all four French journalists said they were kept for a period -- were videotaped being beheaded by a militant who spoke on camera with a British accent.

El Shafee Elsheikh, a jihadist from London, was found guilty in 2022 of hostage-taking and conspiracy to murder US citizens -- Foley and Sotloff, as well as aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller -- and supporting a "terrorist" organisation.