Four on trial in Paris for recruitment of Iraq fighters

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Four men suspected of helping a network that recruited fighters for the Iraqi insurgency went on trial in Paris on Wednesday. The men, three Moroccans and a French-Algerian citizen, are accused "criminal association in relation to a terrorist undertaking," a broad charge often used in terrorism-related cases in France. They risk up to 10 years in prison. Prosecutors say the men figured in a network in the southern city of Montpellier in 2005 and 2006. The inquiry began in 2004, with officials looking into the cases of young Frenchmen who left to fight in Iraq, several of whom died there. Similar cases have exposed how the Iraq war has drawn in radical youths from neglected corners of France to battlefields where, police fear, they can learn skills they could use later to stage terror attacks back home.