French Police Arrest 11 in Recruitment for Al Qaeda

PARIS, Feb. 14 — The French antiterrorism police have arrested 11 people, most of them accused of connections to Iraqi insurgency recruitment rings linked to Al Qaeda, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday.

Two suspects were detained at Orly Airport on Tuesday night, and nine were detained on Wednesday, mostly in southwestern France.

French news reports said that the two men detained at the airport had been expelled from Syria. Le Monde said they had been arrested in Syria in mid-December as part of a group thought to be affiliated with Al Qaeda.

The arrests took place after an investigation by French intelligence services over several months, the Interior Ministry said.

“These individuals from southwestern France are involved in the organization of a jihadist recruitment ring for Iraq,” the ministry said.

A number of French citizens have been arrested in recent months in France and abroad, accused of trying to enter Iraq as fighters or of trying to enlist others to join the Iraqi insurgency.

In October 2006, Syrian security forces arrested three young French men who were accused of seeking to join the Iraqi insurgency. Their arrests led the French police to detain three more in France; they were accused of a connection to a recruitment ring, local news media said.

Egyptian forces in December 2006 arrested 12 French citizens, accusing them of connections to another jihad recruitment ring, but most of them were released without charges, Le Figaro reported.

The war in Iraq has encouraged terrorism, President Jacques Chirac said in his New Year’s address to foreign diplomats on Jan. 5. “It has undermined the stability of the entire region, where every country now fears for its security and its independence,” he said. “It has offered terrorism a new field for expansion.”

The French still have their heads in the sand.