A couple was charged in Paris with terrorist conspiracy and imprisoned on Tuesday, suspected of having attempted to join the group of French jihadist Omar Diaby, alias Omar Omsen , in Syria, AFP learned from a source close to the case. The woman was arrested as she was preparing to board a flight in Toulouse bound for Cyprus, according to the source close to the case. The man was due to leave a few days later.
The suspect, 21-year-old Alexia R., appeared in a long black dress at the hearing before the judge of liberties and detention at the Paris judicial court. Her lawyer, Maria Snitsar, declined to comment, as did the man’s lawyer, Ambroise Vienet-Legué.
Omar Diaby went to Syria in 2013, where he led a jihadist brigade made up of young French people , most of whom, like him, were from the Nice region. In September 2016, the United States designated him an “international terrorist .” He is the subject of an arrest warrant issued by the French courts. Arrested by the HTS group in August 2020, he was released in February 2022, without the reasons for his arrest being disclosed.
Group of about “fifty” people
Around “fifty” people are believed to be in the group of this Franco-Senegalese man turned preacher, French security sources told AFP in December. Omar Diaby’s katiba (unit) is a “small group” with “little income” and which is “relegated to the background ,” the same sources observed. In recent months, several other people have been implicated in France on similar suspicions.
At the end of April, we revealed that a man presented as a former soldier of the Engineering Corps , Manuel B., born in 1984, had been indicted and imprisoned for having wanted to join this same group with his wife. In mid-March, two men aged 19 and 24 suspected of having also wanted to join Omar Diaby’s brigade in Syria were indicted in Paris and the younger of the two imprisoned.
