Frenchman ID’d among ISIS terrorists in beheading video
The grisly video — clearly aimed at a Western audience — lingers as much on the faces of the camouflaged extremists as the men who are beheaded. The victims include American aid worker Peter Kassig and more than a dozen Syrian soldiers.
The images of the Islamic State militants, who are shown one by one in close-up, allowed authorities to identify one of them Monday as a 22-year-old Frenchman who converted to radical Islam.
Maxime Hauchard has been on the radar of French authorities since 2011 when he took two trips to Mauritania to attend a Quranic school, said Paris prosecutor Francois Molins.
The prosecutor said investigators were trying to determine if another Frenchman also is in the video.
The overwhelming majority of Islamic State fighters are from the Mideast, but the extremist group is trying to cement its claim on an Islamic empire straddling Iraq and Syria.
Europe appears to be a fertile ground to find supporters, with officials saying thousands of young Europeans have headed off to jihad.
More than 1,000 people in France alone are under surveillance for suspected plans to join the militants, officials said.
In the video released Sunday, some of the knife-wielding extremists standing behind their kneeling victims had distinctly Asian features.
Another whose face was hooded had the familiar London accent of the jihadi who also appeared in beheading videos with American hostages James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and with British hostages David Haines and Alan Henning.
There also were indications that a Welsh medical student may be the man standing next to Hauchard.
“It’s quite transparent that IS is trying to exaggerate its base of support,” said Charlie Winter, a researcher at the Quilliam Foundation in London. “They are trying to show that Muslims from all over the world are protecting their Syrian brethren and their Iraqi brethren.”
European officials are trying just as furiously to counter that message.
“I call solemnly and seriously on all our citizens, and notably our young people who are the primary target of the terrorist propaganda, to open your eyes to the terrible reality of the actions of Daesh,” said French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.
“These are criminals that are building a system of barbarity.”
Hauchard gave an interview to France’s BFM television in July, telling the network he had helped capture Mosul, the Iraqi city whose fall eventually prompted the United States to resume military operations in Iraq.
“We’re waiting for death,” Hauchard said at the time. “My objective is to be a martyr.”
A man from Wales, Ahmed Muthana, said he thinks he saw his son, 20-year-old Nasser Muthana, in the latest video, and Winter, the British researcher, confirmed the likeness.
“It resembles him. I was shown a picture of the video. I cannot confirm it is him, but I think it might be,” Ahmed Muthana told Britain’s Press Association.
Kassig had gone to Syria on a humanitarian mission.
“(Our son) lost his life as a result of his love for the Syrian people and his desire to ease their suffering,” the slain hostage’s parents, Ed and Paula Kassig, said in a statement.
As for the French militant in the video, Molins said he had used aid work as a pretext.
“The humanitarian action was a facade. In fact, he wanted to fight and join Islamic State agents,” Molins said.
With Kassig’s death, the Islamic State group has killed five Westerners it was holding.
Unlike previous videos of slain Western hostages, the latest one did not show the decapitation of Kassig, the moments leading up to his death or threaten to kill any other Western hostages.
Thanks for reading, leave your thought in the comment section below.
Comments
Post a Comment