Two men placed in police custody Tuesday morning because suspected of helping a former Tunisian jihadist who fought in Syria to come clandestinely to Europe were released Thursday without being prosecuted, concordant sources indicate.
In this investigation opened in October 2019, five men have already been indicted for "criminal terrorist criminal association", said a judicial source. The two suspects were arrested in Paris and in Seine-Saint-Denis. Investigators were looking to verify whether they were involved in an illegal immigration stream, said a source familiar with the matter.
According to these sources, investigations have so far identified a man who fought for IS in 2015 and who chose to emigrate to Europe, first to Germany, before relocating to France. This Tunisian was arrested in October in Villers-Cotterêts (Aisne) by the Directorate General of Internal Security (DGSI) and has been imprisoned since.
At the end of 2019, nearly 300 “ghosts”
On the sidelines of the question of "ghosts", these French or residents in France who left to do jihad in the Iraqi-Syrian zone and back in France, internal security arrested two Syrian refugees in two other separate anti-terrorist cases, during of the past two years.
In January 2020, a thirty-something Syrian refugee with refugee status was arrested in connection with a large-scale search carried out by the DGSI in the Brest region. He is suspected of having been a member of the Islamic State organization.
The question of "ghosts" is crucial for the authorities. At the end of 2019, some 300 people had returned from the Iraqi-Syrian zone to around 1,300 parts of France. These "ghosts" however constitute a "controlled threat", estimated in 2019 the parliamentary intelligence delegation.
