3 French Extremists in U.S. Custody in Iraq

U.S. troops in Iraq have detained three French militants and police here rounded up 10 of their comrades from a group that sent raw youths from Europe to take part in the conflict with America, officials said Friday.

The first confirmed capture of European Islamist fighters turns attention on the increasing movement of militants from countries such as Italy, Germany, France and Belgium to Iraq, European officials say. Several of the recruits reportedly have died in Iraq, but investigators were unaware Friday of any being held by U.S. forces other than the three Frenchmen.

The makeup of the group illustrates the evolving profile and speedy radicalization of Iraq-bound extremists, authorities said.

“This is a new and spontaneous generation,” said an official in the French Interior Ministry. Unlike previous militants, they had never been to Afghanistan or Bosnia, considered traditional training grounds for Muslim extremists.

Although the case was first reported Friday by French media, U.S. troops captured two of the Frenchmen in the battle to retake Fallouja in November, the official said. A third man was captured in Mosul, he said.

U.S. military sources confirmed that they were holding three French nationals in Camp Bucca, a detention facility in southern Iraq.

The suspects from Paris are a mixed group with Arab, African and French origins, officials say. Only their 23-year-old leader, Farid Benyettou, has previous ties to extremist networks, officials and a defense lawyer said. Group members financed their journeys themselves and hoped to join Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant thought to have ties to Al Qaeda, because they had heard about him on television, officials said.

Among the 10 people arrested in Paris last week were Benyettou and Thamer Bouchnak, 22. Bouchnak’s lawyer, Dominique Many, said his client was determined to reach Iraq despite his lack of weapons experience.

“Here’s a young man who had never touched a gun in his life, who was ready to go and probably get himself killed in Iraq,” Many said.

“He received absolutely no training. What’s so bizarre about this is that they were amateurs, the improvisation, their youth. But they had already sent 10 guys to Iraq. And three died there.”

The disclosure comes four days before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to arrive here on a visit intended to revitalize U.S.-French ties. Although France opposed the Iraq war, it has continued to cooperate closely on counter-terrorism, law enforcement authorities in both nations said. A senior French official said investigators had learned of the militants’ departure and advised U.S. security forces of their likely presence in Iraq.

The Interior Ministry official identified the French nationals arrested in Fallouja as Chekhou Diakhabi, 19, and Peter Cherif, 22. Diakhabi’s family is from sub-Saharan Africa and Cherif is of North African descent. French officials said they did not know the identity of the person detained in Mosul.

Rumors of two insurgents with French passports fighting in the former rebel stronghold had been circulating for some time. A French photographer arrested by U.S. Marines on the first day of the invasion, Nov. 8, said he was interrogated about two Frenchmen -- one white, the other black.

The Marine interrogators “asked me if I knew these two French people in Fallouja,” the photographer, Corentin Fleury, said during an interview in Baghdad in December. “I told them I didn’t know anything about them,” said the photographer, who spent five days in U.S. custody.

Diakhabi and Cherif had frequented the Al Adawa mosque in a working-class area of northeast Paris and become disciples of Benyettou, officials said. Described as a street preacher with long, Rastafarian-style hair, Benyettou allegedly became involved in Islamic extremism through a brother-in-law in a North African network that had dispatched recruits to Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, investigators and the defense lawyer said.

Unlike many leading figures in Europe’s Islamist networks, Benyettou did not train in Afghanistan, the Interior Ministry official said. The group he preached to raised about $10,000 to finance their travels, Le Figaro newspaper reported Friday. They enrolled in Koranic schools in Syria, a familiar ruse, then crossed into Iraq to join insurgents, investigators said.

The suspects do not have ties to a larger, Moroccan-dominated network that allegedly executed the Madrid train bombings in March and is active in the movement of recruits to Iraq.

“This is different: an independent, self-contained group,” said the senior law enforcement official, adding that their profile underscored the freelance, anarchic nature of Islamic extremism today.

Three members of the group went to Iraq last spring and died within a few months, two in combat in the so-called Sunni Triangle and one in a suicide bombing near Baghdad, according to officials and Le Figaro. Another is jailed in Syria.

Restless European youths drift into Islamic extremism the way they might have joined street gangs in the past, police say.

Bouchnak was born in France to a Tunisian immigrant family that speaks good French, has integrated well into French society and is not particularly religious, his defense lawyer Many said. He joined the group only seven months ago.

Bouchnak was a deliveryman and also worked at a Chinese restaurant. He had a minor criminal record, the lawyer said. He stopped working and began frequenting mosques, first in his neighborhood in the gritty Seine-Saint-Denis area north of Paris. Then he began going to Al Adawa, where he fell under the spell of Benyettou, Many said.

“The indoctrination was very fast,” he said. “Within a month he had gone to a Koranic school in Syria to study Arabic with the idea of then going to Iraq to fight. But he didn’t like it. He had difficulty because he barely speaks Arabic. He wasn’t motivated and he failed in his intention of going to Iraq, so he came back.”

Nonetheless, Benyettou persuaded him to try again, Many said. Bouchnak went on a pilgrimage to Mecca and returned last month to join another Parisian bound for Iraq and purchased a round-trip ticket to Syria, the lawyer said.

“I think that’s the best proof that he wanted to fight in Iraq, but not to die,” Many said.

Bouchnak was supposed to meet a 14-year-old at the Damascus airport, the contact in charge of providing weapons and arranging passage across the border, Many said. The teenager had apparently once lived in France, the lawyer said.

“These are young kids who wanted to join a cause, who were exalted idealists, and underwent a process similar to entering a sect,” Many said. The French counter-terror agency DST rounded up the group before the two could leave for Iraq.

Even though France has been critical of the war, authorities want to make it clear they are tough on anyone headed for Iraq to take part in violence. French investigators also fear domestic attacks if combat-hardened extremists return to Europe. So far, French authorities have not come across any fighters who have returned, the senior French official said.

“We have intelligence that some may be planning to come back and that’s worrisome,” the official said. “But so far most of these guys are going to Iraq with one goal: to die as martyrs while killing as many Americans as possible.”

U.S. commanders say no more than 1,000 foreign fighters are in Iraq, a tenth or less of the insurgent force. But the foreigners play a key role, providing most of the manpower for suicide attacks. The great majority of them are believed to be from neighboring Arab countries.

Times staff writer Patrick J. McDonnell in Baghdad contributed to this report.