The Paris Court of Appeal (Cour d’Assises Spéciale) on Friday July 1 sentenced a 27-year-old former gendarme who had converted to Islam to 15 years in prison with a two-thirds security detention. He was charged with advocating armed jihad in Western countries. The former gendarme had been arrested in January 2018 “in view of the risk that a possible act of violence was imminent”.
The young man, who is on trial for involvement in a terrorist criminal organisation in preparation for one or more crimes against persons, will also have to undergo five years of socio-legal supervision (SSJ) after his sentence expires. Dylan Toussaint had been investigated by the Directorate General of Internal Security (DGSI) at the end of 2017 due to his suspicious activities on social networks.
Under various pseudonyms, he advocated “the ideology of Islamist terrorist groups, in particular the Islamic State organisation” and encouraged “the committing of acts of violence in Western countries”, the indictment stated. He had been arrested in January 2018 “in view of the risk that a possible act of violence was imminent”. The young man had undergone training as a gendarme trainee, during which he had also been trained in the use of weapons. In July 2017, he was assigned to the police brigade of Lunel (Hérault), which he left two months later. During his interrogations, the young man stated that he had converted to Islam in 2014 at the age of 20: “I had difficult times (…) I found something to make me feel good”.
He also told investigators that the war in Syria had led him to become interested in jihadist groups, but also asserted that he had never intended to travel to the area, explaining that he had watched videos of atrocities out of unhealthy curiosity. “I don’t like killing,” he argued. […] The prosecution highlighted that during the search of his mother’s house, investigators had found a homemade “pipe-bomb” type explosive device which, according to the police, was ready for use and could have caused “more or less serious or even fatal injuries within a radius of about ten metres”.Le Figaro
2 thoughts on “France: 15 years’ imprisonment for a former gendarme who promoted jihadism”
Comments are closed.