Two more Europeans identified in Islamic State beheading video

Security officials have identified two more Europeans among the Islamic State militants who appeared in a video recording their slaughter of Syrian troops last week.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said 22-year-old Mickael Dos Santos, from the Paris suburb of Champigny-sur-Marne, had been identified from the video in which the beheading of 15 Syrian soldiers was conducted before the camera and the severed head of American aid worker Peter Kassig was also shown.

Belgian authorities also put a name to another of the 16 suspects appearing in the gruesome video: Abdelmajid Gharmaoui, 28, from the Flemish town of Vilvoorde that has become a hotbed of militant activity among Belgian converts to Islam.

Vilvoorde Mayor Hans Bonte told journalists that he was proposing to lawmakers a bill that would revoke travel documents of Belgians suspected of planning to join foreign extremists.

Dos Santos, of Portuguese origin, is the second French national to be identified taking part in the mass killing. On Monday, French prosecutors said Maxime Hauchard, 22, of Normandy, was among the knife-wielding extremists videotaped executing the Syrian captives.

French authorities have reported that more than 1,000 of its citizens have joined Islamic State militants, and that about 400 are thought to be taking part in the fighting now wracking Syria and Iraq.

On Wednesday, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told journalists that 49 Frenchmen have been confirmed killed in the extremists’ war against less radical Muslims and foreign forces trying to halt their campaign of terror.

“Sadly, we are not surprised to learn that French citizens or residents of France are found at the heart of these cells and taking part in this barbarity,” the BBC quoted Valls as telling reporters covering a security meeting in Beauvais, north of Paris.

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