French militants who visited Syria given 6, 10 years’ jail

A Paris court on Friday sentenced two French militants who travelled to Syria to six and 10 years in prison, although one was sentenced in absentia.

Zakaria Chadili, 28, who visited Syria in 2014, was handed six years of prison while his friend Ziyeid Souied, 22, was sentenced in absentia to a 10-year jail term. An active member of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group, he is still in Syria.

Chadili spent six months in Syria but had shown a “willingness to reinsert” himself into French society, the judge found, and his sentence could be commuted in the coming months.

Souied was last known to be working in the ISIS’s police unit and assisting with the recruitment of foreign fighters.