Trial Begins for Three Suspected ISIS Terrorists in France

The trial, which opened on Monday, will run until February 19. The three accused were arrested in 2016.

An agent of the counter-espionage service of the Directorate General of Internal Security (DGSI), on an infiltration mission, joined the Islamic State (IS) group under the pseudonym "Ulysse". Informed that IS was looking for weapons to carry out a "violent action" on French territory, "Ulysse" managed to hack the Telegram instant messaging application system and contact a IS group leader in Syria, nicknamed "Sayyaf". He then convinced him that he could provide him with the weapons for 13,300 euros, or about $16,000 in cash, which he would have to pick up from a grave in the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris.

Subsequently, "Ulysse" communicated to the leader the coordinates of a hiding place in the Montmorency forest, northwest of Paris, where he could retrieve the weapons. But it turns out that the indicated hiding place was under video surveillance by the DGSI. This led the intelligence services to arrest them, after receiving the alert that two Frenchmen coming from Turkey and Syria were preparing a terrorist attack.

The police found in their belongings an encrypted USB key with the GPS coordinates of the Montmorency weapons cache. The third accused was arrested after the DGSI managed to intercept a message in which a leader was asking for weapons and housing in Marseille for another IS member.