PARIS: Police in France are questioning three suspected Islamic extremists who were deported from Pakistan this week, judicial sources said on Thursday.
Follow up:
The three Frenchmen had been held in secret in Pakistan since they entered the country illegally 10 months ago to fight NATO troops in neighbouring Afghanistan.
The case is likely to draw parallels with that of Mohammed Merah, the 23-year-old who shot dead seven people in southwest France in March 2012 after returning from Pakistan.
A source close to the case told AFP that one of the suspected extremists was deported on Tuesday, the second on Wednesday and the third Thursday. All three — aged 30, 29 and 27 — have formally been detained for questioning.
Investigators in Pakistan said police arrested the trio on May 28 last year after they entered the country illegally from Iran.
They were detained along with Naamen Meziche, another Frenchman of North African extraction previously known to Western security services as a presumed member of al Qaeda.
“They said they came to Pakistan to deepen their knowledge of Islam and to fight in Afghanistan,” one investigator told AFP on condition of anonymity. Meziche’s arrest was announced last June but French and Pakistani officials had kept quiet about the other three.
At the time, Pakistani officials said Meziche was probably heading to Somalia.
But Western experts said he had been en route to Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal belt on the Afghan border, an Al-Qaeda and Taliban stronghold. Investigators believe Meziche could have been taking the other three to the tribal belt, a rear base for the Taliban’s war in Afghanistan and a location of al Qaeda training camps.
Officials say the three men left France in January 2012, telling their families in Orleans south of Paris that they were going on pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. But five months later they were detained in Pakistan.
Follow up:
The three Frenchmen had been held in secret in Pakistan since they entered the country illegally 10 months ago to fight NATO troops in neighbouring Afghanistan.
The case is likely to draw parallels with that of Mohammed Merah, the 23-year-old who shot dead seven people in southwest France in March 2012 after returning from Pakistan.
A source close to the case told AFP that one of the suspected extremists was deported on Tuesday, the second on Wednesday and the third Thursday. All three — aged 30, 29 and 27 — have formally been detained for questioning.
Investigators in Pakistan said police arrested the trio on May 28 last year after they entered the country illegally from Iran.
They were detained along with Naamen Meziche, another Frenchman of North African extraction previously known to Western security services as a presumed member of al Qaeda.
“They said they came to Pakistan to deepen their knowledge of Islam and to fight in Afghanistan,” one investigator told AFP on condition of anonymity. Meziche’s arrest was announced last June but French and Pakistani officials had kept quiet about the other three.
At the time, Pakistani officials said Meziche was probably heading to Somalia.
But Western experts said he had been en route to Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal belt on the Afghan border, an Al-Qaeda and Taliban stronghold. Investigators believe Meziche could have been taking the other three to the tribal belt, a rear base for the Taliban’s war in Afghanistan and a location of al Qaeda training camps.
Officials say the three men left France in January 2012, telling their families in Orleans south of Paris that they were going on pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. But five months later they were detained in Pakistan.
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