Prosecutors Seek Long Sentences for Alleged ISIS Plotters in Foiled Paris Attack

The public prosecutors of the PNAT have respectively requested 20 and 22 years of criminal imprisonment against two Strasbourg residents, Hicham Makran and Yassine Bousseria, both aged 41, and a maximum sentence of 30 years of criminal imprisonment against the Moroccan Hicham El-Hanafi, 30 years old, described as the "most loyal soldier" of the Islamic State (IS), reports AFP. At the end of their indictment, Benjamin Chambre and Saliha Hand-Ouali requested that all sentences be accompanied by a two-thirds security period. They also requested a permanent ban from French territory for Hicham at the end of his sentence in France. "Obviously, the operation was imminent," they estimated.

The "Ulysses" operation, named after the DGSI agent who infiltrated the IS networks, had made it possible to thwart this planned attack. The three defendants had been arrested in November 2016, a few hours apart, in Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône) and Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin). "The ’Ulysses’ operation was the most ambitious judicial operation in France in the field of counter-terrorism," said Benjamin Chambre, stressing that the arrest of the three men "made it possible to thwart a coordinated action with a war weapon, hatched by the Islamic State from Raqqa," in Syria.

The verdict is expected this Wednesday.