French extremists dream of jihad in Iraq

[Silverback]

PARIS - Boubakeur el Hakim traded his Paris neighborhood of boulangeries and halal butcher shops for the insurgent camps of Iraq. When he came home, he told his war stories to other young men on the forgotten edges of French society, allegedly persuading some to follow in his footsteps.

His younger brother did, and died fighting U.S. forces.

After years of investigation by French authorities, el Hakim, 24, went on trial this month in a case exposing how the Iraq war has sucked radical youths from Europe to a battlefield where they have learned skills that officials fear may one day be used in domestic terror attacks.

Along with four other young Frenchmen, a Moroccan and an Algerian, el Hakim is accused of funneling French Muslim fighters to Iraq. All the Frenchmen except suspected ringleader Farid Benyettou, 26, have acknowledged going to Iraq or planning to go. All deny inciting others to go.

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[Chiron]

So then where ever there is extremism there will be recruiting. My guess is that there are more European countries that without there knowledge has supported the insurgency.

I would guess that even three countries in the Balkans have supported the insurgency in Iraq. After all when there is a majority of Muslim and they are poor, they will support an insurgency.

France has a huge Muslim minority that is struggling economically.

[johnjohnson1957]

Intel reports, recently made public, state radical Islamic fundmentalists assume they would have little success in using individual with middle eastern backgrounds and passports for future ops in CONUS. Because of this there has been a serious effort to recruit individuals who can easily pass in western society, i.e., folks from western Europe.

[RTO]

I wonder, what ever happened to John Walker Lindh?

An excerpt of his Wikipedia page states:

"In January 2003, Lindh was sent to a medium-security prison in Victorville, northeast of Los Angeles. On March 3, 2003, Lindh was tackled by inmate Richard Dale Morrison, who hit him while screaming obscenities before running away. Lindh suffered a bruised forehead. On July 2, 2003, Morrison was charged with a misdemeanor count of assault.

Lindh was held at ADMAX in Florence, Colorado, the federal Supermax facility for a short time but he's currently serving his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, Terre Haute at Terre Haute, Indiana.[15] In April 2007, citing the reduced sentence for the Australian prisoner David Hicks, Lindh's attorneys made a public plea for a Presidential commutation to lower his twenty year sentence."