al-Qaeda for the day

The BBC has several article about al-Qaeda in France:

A Frenchman believed to have had links to a German al-Qaeda cell behind the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US has been remanded in custody in Paris.
Naamen Meziche, who is of Algerian descent, has been placed under formal investigation.
He was deported from Pakistan and faces charges of criminal conspiracy regarding a terrorist enterprise. He was arrested in May of 2012 in Pakistan, close to the border with Iran. Three other suspected French militants with whom he was detained were deported to France earlier this year.
Naamen Meziche was considered an associate of al-Qaeda commander Younis al-Mauritani, who was believed to have been ordered by Osama bin Laden to plan attacks in Australia, Europe, and the US.
"This is a big fish, at the historic heart of al-Qaeda," a French anti-terrorism official told the AFP news agency. However, analysts say there appears to be little evidence of his involvement in any attack, and the case against him is unclear.
Born in Paris in 1970, Naamen Meziche travelled first to Afghanistan in the 1990s, before moving to Germany. He was considered close to the so-called Hamburg cell that planned the al-Qaeda attacks on New York City and Washington in 2001. He had reportedly recruited jihadis at a radical mosque in Hamburg that the authorities shut down in 2010 on suspicion of encouraging fanaticism.
Three of the 9/11 hijackers, including ringleader Mohammed Atta, who piloted the first plane into New York City's World Trade Center, met regularly at the mosque before moving to the US.
A court source told French media that the case against Naamen Meziche would use information dating back to the 1990s provided by authorities in Germany.
The French government has been concerned about the risk of French citizens travelling to Pakistan for terror training, ever since the seven murders by Toulouse gunman Mohamed Merah (see article below) in March of 2012. Merah, who visited Pakistan and Afghanistan, killed a teacher and three young children at a Jewish school. In separate attacks, he also killed three soldiers.

Leaked documents suggest that French secret services stopped tracking Toulouse gunman Mohamed Merah (photo), despite evidence of his extensive links to jihadis, including in the UK.
The Le Monde newspaper says it has seen notes from the domestic intelligence agency DCRI describing his successful efforts to conceal his movements. The judge investigating the case said he was perplexed by the DCRI decision.
Merah killed seven people in March of 2012 before being shot dead by police. The victims included three soldiers and four Jewish people.
The leaked papers suggest there was more than just suspicion on the part of the French intelligence services, says the BBC's Christian Fraser in Paris.
Merah had been tracked by the security services since 2006. The report prepared for the French government and leaked to Le Monde cites a DCRI officer raising concerns about the man in March of 2011.
The officer said Merah rarely left his home, and was paranoid and suspicious. He had no internet in his flat, did not appear to have a mobile phone, and always used public telephone booths.
Another note, on 26 April 2011, reported that Merah was violent to women for having shown disrespect to a Muslim. The note said he glorified the murder of "Western infidels" in songs he composed, and he was photographed with a knife and Quran. He travelled frequently to the Middle East. He had a long list of contacts to Islamist movements in the UK, the same leaked document says.
According to Le Monde, Merah was last questioned in November of 2011, and had great difficulty explaining a visit to Pakistan, where he had been training with militants. Just a week later, the DCRI suddenly stopped monitoring him.
Judge Christophe Teissier said he was surprised by the move. The judge said Merah's profile was typical of a home-grown threat: he was independent, radicalised quickly, and did everything possible to conceal the support and training he was receiving.
In August of 2012, Le Monde said other documents it had seen showed Merah had made more than eighteen hundred calls to nearly two hundred contacts in twenty different countries.
Merah was shot dead on 22 March 2012 after a huge manhunt culminated in a 32-hour stand-off with police at an apartment in Toulouse. Merah's rampage, from 11 to 19 March 2012, terrorised the region.

Rico says there was doubtless weeping somewhere over his killing, but not here...