Five Arrested in Suspected French Jihadist Recruitment Ring

The French Interior Ministry announced today that five people have been arrested on suspicion of belonging to a ring that recruits young women to join Islamic militants in Syria.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that the arrests were made between Tuesday and Wednesday morning in and around the city of Lyon in central France.

The statement revealed that those arrested were “suspected of having played a very active role in the recruitment and departure of several young women who left for Syria in the last few months”. Police officers confiscated various weapons and equipment during the arrests.

According to Le Monde, two of those arrested were minors, while a police source quoted by AFP said that a brother and sister were among those arrested. The same source also said that one of the suspects might be linked to Forsane Alizza, an Islamic group dissolved in 2012.

Cazeneuve concluded with a statement of the government’s resolve to “fight against Jihadist networks… without respite”, and a mention of recent counter-terrorist legislation.

Earlier this month, two teenage girls were arrested, also in the Lyon region, both of whom had been part of an online jihadist network. The girls, aged 15 and 17, had planned to blow up a synagogue in the city. Chloe Triomphe, police and justice reporter for French radio station Europe 1, said that they had met only on social media, and had links to other young extremists in the region.

The most recent arrests come after the introduction of a National Assembly draft law that strengthens France’s anti-terrorism arsenal. Its main measure, a travel ban on anyone suspected of "planning to travel abroad to take part in terrorist activities, war crimes or crimes against humanity or in a theatre of operations of terrorist groups", was approved by members on Tuesday night with a large majority.

The new bill was first proposed by the cabinet after the arrest of Mehdi Nemmouche, a French citizen who is believed to have fought for ISIS in Syria, in connection with a shooting at the Brussels Jewish Museum in which four people died.

According to official estimates, young French men and women make up the largest contingent of European jihadis fighting in Syria. Cazeneuve told a French Newspaper on Sunday that around 930 French citizens have been travelling to and from Iraq and Syria recently, a 74 percent increase in eight months. Of those, 36 were killed while overseas. Security officials fear that returning jihadists, like Nemmouche, will use their newly acquired fighting skills (and EU passports) to commit terrorism back home.

Security services across Europe are becoming increasingly concerned with online radicalisation, particularly following the proliferation of videos created by jihadist groups such as Islamic State.