A dozen former French soldiers, mostly from special forces and the Foreign Legion, have joined jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq, a defense ministry source confirms, as the government readies a new multimillion anti-terror plan.<\/p>\n
Reports of French ex-military turning to jihad first appeared on Radio France Internationale (RFI) and in L’Opinion daily on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
An anonymous defense ministry source later confirmed the information to AFP.<\/p>\n
“We estimate around a dozen former troops have joined these networks<\/em>,” the source said. “Our concern is not former soldiers… It’s preventing the phenomenon of radicalization within our forces<\/em>.”<\/p>\n Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, however, would not directly comment on the issue at a Wednesday press conference on France\u2019s new anti-terrorism measures.<\/p>\n “The cases of former soldiers being tempted by jihadist adventure are extremely rare<\/em>,” was all he said.<\/p>\n One shouldn\u2019t underestimate those rare cases, David Thomson, RFI journalist and author of The French Jihadists, believes.<\/p>\n \u201cThese people who come [to Syria and Iraq] are already fighters and they know the way the French troops fight<\/em>,\u201d Thomson told Le Figaro.<\/p>\n Among soldiers-turned-jihadists are those who served in the Foreign Legion and former paratroopers, RFI says, adding that some of the fighters confessed to being former French soldiers on social networks.<\/p>\n \u201cOthers are explosives experts, young people in their twenties. Some have been converted [to Islam], others are from Arab-Muslim culture<\/em>,\u201d the RFI report says.<\/p>\n L\u2019Opinion singles out a French jihadist of Maghreb origin, who served in the elite 1st Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment for five years and underwent commando training in fighting techniques, shooting and survival.<\/p>\n The man was then hired by a private security company to work on oil facilities in the Arabian Peninsula.<\/p>\n “He was gradually radicalized, letting himself grow a beard and adhering to Islamist ideology<\/em>,” the daily writes, adding the man eventually went to Syria.<\/p>\n The Defense Ministry plans to monitor its recruits as well as ex-soldiers more closely to prevent possible radicalization. The army\u2019s 1,000-strong internal intelligence unit will get 65 extra staff for that purpose, Le Drian announced on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A dozen former French soldiers, mostly from special forces and the Foreign Legion, have joined jihadists fighting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[62,1],"tags":[64,4,14,356,15,13],"class_list":["post-785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-france","tag-iraq","tag-isis","tag-middle-east","tag-militants","tag-syria"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/ISIS-militants-e1427916641310.jpg?fit=550%2C280&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-cF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":788,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785\/revisions\/788"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}