Saturday, October 6, 2012

French cops kill convert jihadist who firebombed Jewish store, arrest 11 others

Feel-good story of the day.
(Newser) – French police arrested 11 suspected terrorists and shot one dead today in a nationwide sweep aimed at breaking up terror networks and responding to a strike on a Jewish store, AFP reports. The man killed was Jeremy Sidney, 33, whose fingerprints were identified on a grenade tossed into a kosher supermarket in Paris last month, police said. He reportedly opened fire with a .357 when police entered his house in Strasbourg, lightly wounding three officers before being killed.

Like three other suspects, Sidney was carrying a will—a sign that "you foresee that extreme outcomes may take place in relatively short order," said a prosecutor. Police say the sweep targeted a possible Salafist network that played a role in the Paris attack, which hurt one person and shocked the Jewish community. The suspects were "often common criminals who set out on a path of radicalisation toward Islamist jihadism," said a police spokesman.