Frenchman, Moroccan Get Lengthy Jail Terms for Attack Plot in France

French police stand guard in Paris. Reuters file photo
French police stand guard in Paris. Reuters file photo
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Frenchman, Moroccan Get Lengthy Jail Terms for Attack Plot in France

French police stand guard in Paris. Reuters file photo
French police stand guard in Paris. Reuters file photo

A Frenchman and a Moroccan received heavy prison terms on appeal Friday for an attack plot that was foiled after an intelligence agent posing as a militant infiltrated their cyber network, AFP reported.

Yassine Bousseria, 42, was sentenced to 24 years in prison for participation in a terrorist conspiracy to prepare terrorist acts, the same term he had been handed by a lower court in February.

The other man in the dock, Hicham El-Hanafi, 31, was sentenced to 30 years in prison, also in line with the lower court ruling.

A third person convicted in the case, Frenchman Hicham Makran, was sentenced to 22 years in jail in February and did not appeal.

The three were tried on charges of joining a terror group with a view to carrying out attacks, AFP said.

An agent from France's DGSI domestic intelligence service, using the codename Ulysse, had infiltrated communication networks of ISIS militants in a ruse that led to the arrest of the three.

The case began in 2016. After intelligence indicating ISIS was seeking to obtain weapons for a "violent action" on French soil, the DGSI agent managed to penetrate an encrypted Telegram messaging loop and make contact with an ISIS "emir" in Syria, nicknamed Sayyaf.

Sayyaf said the militants needed munitions including four Kalashnikovs, which Ulysse said he could supply.

In June 2016, Sayyaf sent Ulysse 13,300 euros ($16,000) in cash which was deposited on a grave in the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris.

With this money, Ulysse then told Sayyaf that he had bought weapons and hid them in a forest north of Paris. The surroundings were then equipped with surveillance cameras.

French intelligence then received information that the two French citizens, who had been around the Turkish-Syrian border, had come home and were readying for action.

They were arrested and found to have a USB key encrypted with the coordinates of the arms cache.

"The facts established against Hicham El-Hanafi are the most serious that can be committed in the context of a terrorist conspiracy, since they were directly aimed at committing an attack with a weapon of war on French territory," the court heard Friday.



Thousands Join Effort to Clean Up Catastrophic Spanish Floods

Rescue workers walk, following heavy rains that caused floods, in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, November 1, 2024. REUTERS/Nacho Doce
Rescue workers walk, following heavy rains that caused floods, in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, November 1, 2024. REUTERS/Nacho Doce
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Thousands Join Effort to Clean Up Catastrophic Spanish Floods

Rescue workers walk, following heavy rains that caused floods, in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, November 1, 2024. REUTERS/Nacho Doce
Rescue workers walk, following heavy rains that caused floods, in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, November 1, 2024. REUTERS/Nacho Doce

An arts and science center which normally plays host to opera performances was on Saturday transformed into the nerve center for the clean-up operation after catastrophic floods in eastern Spain which have claimed at least 207 lives.
Volunteers went to Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences for the first coordinated clean-up organized by regional authorities, Reuters reported.
On Friday, the mass spontaneous arrival of volunteers complicated access for professional emergency workers to some areas, prompting authorities to devise a plan on how and where to deploy them.
Carlos Mazon, Valencian regional president posted on X on Friday: "Tomorrow, Saturday, at 7 in the morning, together with the Volunteer Platform, we will launch the volunteer center to better organize, (and) transport the help of those who are helping from the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia."
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was due to address the nation on Saturday morning.
In some of the worst-hit areas, people have resorted to looting because they have no food or water. Police said on Friday they had arrested 27 people for robbing shops and offices in the Valencia area.
More than 90% of the households in Valencia had regained power on Friday, utility Iberdrola said, though thousands still lacked electricity in cut-off areas that rescuers struggled to reach.
Some 2,000 soldiers were deployed to search for people who are still missing and help survivors of the storm, which triggered a new weather alert in the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencia, where rains are expected to continue during the weekend.
Officials said the death toll is likely to keep rising. It is already Spain's worst flood-related disaster in more than five decades and the deadliest to hit Europe since the 1970s.