French IS jihadist who held journalists gets life sentence

A French court on Friday sentenced a French jihadist to life in prison for holding four journalists captive more than a decade ago in war-torn Syria.

Mehdi Nemmouche, 39, was convicted of having held the French reporters hostage for the Islamic State jihadist group from June 2013 to April 2014.

The sentence carries a minimum term of 22 years before he is eligible for parole.

All four journalists during the trial said they clearly recognised Nemmouche's voice and manner of speech as belonging to a so-called Abu Omar, who terrorised them and made sadistic jokes while they were in captivity.

Nemmouche denied ever being their jailer, only admitting in court that he was an IS fighter in Syria.

From the beginning of the trial last month, he has claimed only to have fought against the forces of former president Bashar al-Assad, who Islamists previously linked to Al-Qaeda helped topple in December.

"It's through terrorism that the Syrian people freed themselves from dictatorship," he claimed on Friday morning ahead of the verdict.

"Yes I was a terrorist and I will never apologise for that."

Nemmouche has said he joined Al-Qaeda's Syria affiliate and then IS -- both listed as "terrorist" in the European Union -- while in the Middle Eastern country.

Clutching notes on Friday morning, he cited a range of figures from German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche to Russian President Vladimir Putin in a speech criticising the "West", especially the United States.

Nemmouche is already in prison after a Belgian court jailed him for life in 2019 for killing four people at a Jewish museum in May 2014, after he had returned from Syria.

- Torture, mock execution -

IS emerged in 2013 in the chaos that followed the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, slowly gaining ground before declaring a so-called caliphate in large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

A US-backed offensive dealt the final blow to that proto-state in 2019.

IS abducted and held hostage 25 Western journalists and aid workers in Syria between 2012 and 2014, publicly executing several of them, according to French prosecutors.

Reporters Didier Francois and Edouard Elias, and then Nicolas Henin and Pierre Torres, were abducted 10 days apart while reporting from northern Syria in June 2013.

They were released in April 2014.

Henin alerted the authorities after he saw a facial composite of the presumed perpetrator of the May 2014 Brussels attack that looked very familiar.

Henin, in a magazine article in September 2014, recounted Nemmouche punching him in the face and terrorising Syrian detainees.

During the trial, he detailed the repeated torture and mock executions he witnessed while in captivity.

- Jihadists presumed dead -

Nemmouche, whose father is unknown, was brought up in the French foster system and became radicalised in prison before going to Syria, say investigators.

The court also handed life sentences to two other jihadists tried in absentia because they are presumed dead.

Belgian jihadist Oussama Atar, a senior IS commander, had already been sentenced to life over the 2015 terror attacks in Paris claimed by IS that killed 130 people, and the Brussels bombings by the group that took the lives of 32 others in 2016.

The other defendant was French IS member Salim Benghalem, accused of having been jailer-in-chief of the hostages.

The court also handed a 22-year sentence to Frenchman Abdelmalek Tanem, 35, accused of being one of the jailers.

None of the journalists had recognised Tanem, who said he was a bodyguard for several IS leaders and slept in the basement of an eye hospital where they were held hostage, but claimed to have never seen them.

But prosecutors argued he was clearly one of around 10 French-speaking IS jailers.

The court also handed a 20-year sentence to Kais Al Abdallah, a 41-year-old Syrian jihadist accused of having helped abduct the journalists and of having been deputy in command in the Syrian city of Raqqa, all of which he denies.