Islamist groups have recruited dozens of former French soldiers, a troubling new report has revealed less than three months after a terrorist attack by a staff member at
police headquarters in
Paris shocked the nation. More than a third of the ex-servicemen are converts to Islam and nearly half served in elite Foreign Legion, parachute, commando or marine units where they acquired expertise in combat and handling weapons and explosives. The conservative newspaper Le Figaro published excerpts on Wednesday from the forthcoming report by the Centre for the Analysis of Terrorism, a Paris-based think tank. The report says the French army “constitutes a strategic recruitment target for terrorist groups… and former soldiers represent tremendous assets for these groups.” The report, “Soldiers and Jihad”, profiles 23 ex-servicemen “identified within terrorist organisations [mainly Isil] or implicated in plotting terrorist attacks”. An earlier parliamentary report noted that about 30 former servicemen have joined jihadist groups since 2012. Several former Legionnaires have been arrested over terrorist plots in France, and ex-paratroopers or commandos have become leaders of Isil combat units in
Syria or Iraq. French troops are fighting Islamists in the
Middle East and the Sahel region of Africa Credit: MICHELE CATTANI/AFP via Getty Images Others who stayed in
France have been involved in planning attacks against soldiers or military sites. Some of the ex-servicemen “became radicalised after they joined the French army, while others started becoming radicalised after they left the army,” the report said. “However, some were planning to go and join jihadist groups before being recruited by the French armed forces.” One such fighter is named as Boris V., from Charente, in south-western France, who became an air commando specifically to learn skills that would be useful to a terrorist group. He took the nom de guerre of “Younous the Deserter” and was killed near Aleppo, Syria, in 2016. Frédéric R., a former legionnaire in his sixties who converted to Islam, was arrested last month and confessed to helping a group of radicalised youths plan attacks. French military intelligence said efforts to detect and prevent radicalisation were stepped up earlier this year and “several cases showing low-level signs” were currently being monitored. It said none of the cases posed an immediate danger and “the threat level from Sunni jihadist Islam within the armed forces is now considered low”. In October, a radicalised police employee stabbed four people to death at police headquarters in Paris, supposedly one of France’s most secure buildings. Thibault de Montbrial, a former paratrooper and head of the Centre for Internal Security Studies, another think tank, told the Telegraph: “The issue of detecting people likely to become radicalised while serving [in the armed forces] is capital. Even if the army is a formidable institution for integration and cohesion, the risk is real”.