By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
A Paris criminal court convicted nine people on Thursday including a French-Algerian former prison inmate who admitted establishing an Islamic group that called for armed jihad in France.
Safe Bourada, 38, was sentenced to 15 years in prison while eight others received penalties of one to nine years on charges linked to financing of and association with a terror group.
Bourada admitted in court to creating a militant group called "Ansar al-Fath," or Partisans of Victory. The group was suspected of planning attacks on the Paris Metro and Orly airport. It was dismantled in 2005 after French authorities received a tip from Algerian counterparts.
In 2005, Christophe Chaboud, head of the counterterrorism unit of the national police, told The Associated Press that the group had had "indirect" contacts with Iraq's former al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in June 2006 in Diyala province.
The court ruled that one of the group's members - Kaci Ouarab, 31 - had received weapons training in Lebanon in 2005 that was designed to help carry out bombings in France.
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