Perched on an armored personnel carrier circulating in the suburbs of the town of Hama, in Syria, six to eight armed men parade around a gas station.
The video, dated this Sunday, received and commented on France 24 by journalist Wassim Nassr, is described by the specialist in jihadist movements as showing a group of French fighters, survivors of the fall of the Islamic State and then the civil war and refugees since in the pocket of Idlib, stronghold of the Syrian “rebels”.
The latter, under the orders of Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), former branch of Al-Qaeda in Syria, faller of the regime of Bashar al-Assad, film themselves again as they enter the town of Hama. And one of them speaks distinctly in French, amid the horns celebrating their arrival: “We are taking the city of Hama. Allahu Akbar (…)”. The following sequence takes place in a village, while the troop drives among a small cheering crowd in a Christian neighborhood materialized by the presence of a church, visible on the video. “Even Christians, they are happy,” we hear, repeated twice. “Sunday day… mass day. No time to go to mass,” comments the fighting videographer, clearly in joy.
A Nice sector brought into line?
Wassim Nassr then underlines the good reception received by these fighters. They do not engage in abuses, which “demonstrates the extent to which al-Jolani holds his troops together,” comments the specialist.
If the presence of foreign jihadists and from a stronger French is without doubt, the question arises of their number and their affiliation, while nearly 1,880 French enlisted in the Iraqi-Syrian jihadist networks were recorded by the authorities in 2015, at the peak of this attractiveness.
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At the start of the lightning offensive by al-Jolani’s troops, there were still “around a hundred French nationals present in the Idlib pocket”, assesses Olivier Christen, national anti-terrorism prosecutor, at the Figaro which details: “Around fifty belong to Omar Omsen’s brigade and around thirty to the movement led by Abu Mohammed al-Jolani”. Omar Omsen, named after a recruiter of jihadists from Nice, once in conflict with al-Jolani’s HTS but who now seems to have been brought into line by the new strongman of Damascus and Syria.