On Friday September 16, two people were found guilty in Paris of “criminal association” and “financing terrorism” in Syria, BFM TV reports. Sami A., a 26-year-old Franco-Algerian, received four years in prison, one of which was suspended, and Abderrahman C., a 23-year-old Franco-Moroccan, was sentenced to four years in prison, two of which were suspended. The two men do not know each other, but both worked on behalf of a trio belonging to the group HTS (Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham), a former branch of Al-Qaeda in Syria.
The two men shared numerous contents on social networks related to “jihadist propaganda”, whose followers they professed to be “at the time” of the offences. The exact reasons for their prosecution: they bought and transferred cryptocurrency tokens before opening online accounts for three members of the terrorist group. 280,000 euros were thus channelled by the trio between 2018 and 2020. The aim was to exchange the money for cryptocurrency via sympathisers based in Europe. The two persons standing trial admitted to the deeds in the trial and justified themselves by saying that they were neither aware of the dangerousness of their deeds nor did they know that they were working for ” combatants”.