- Nemmouche is already in prison after a Belgian court sentenced him to life in prison in 2019 for killing four people at a museum in May 2014, after he returned from Syria.
PARIS: A French court has sentenced a French extremist to life in prison for holding four journalists captive more than a decade ago in the Syrian Arab Republic.
Mehdi Nemmouche, 39, was found guilty of holding French journalists hostage for ISIS from June 2013 to April 2014.
The sentence carries a minimum term of 22 years, after which he will be eligible for parole.
All four journalists testified during the trial that they clearly identified Nemmouche's voice and manner of speech as that of the so-called Abu Omar, who terrorized them and made sadistic jokes while they were in captivity.
Nemmouche denied ever having been their jailer, admitting in court only that he had been an ISIS fighter in Syria.
Since his trial began last month, he has claimed only that he fought against the forces of former President Bashar al-Assad.
“Yes, I was a terrorist, and I will never apologize for it.”
Nemmouche said that while in Syria he joined the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda and then ISIS (both groups are considered “terrorists” in the EU).
Nemmouche is already in prison after a Belgian court sentenced him to life in prison in 2019 for killing four people at a museum in May 2014, after he returned from Syria.
ISIS emerged in 2013 in the chaos following the outbreak of the civil war in Syria and gradually gained strength before declaring a so-called caliphate across much of Syria and neighboring Iraq.
In 2019, a US-backed offensive dealt the final blow to this proto-state.
Between 2012 and 2014, ISIS militants kidnapped and held hostage 25 Western journalists and aid workers in Syria, publicly executing some of them, according to French prosecutors.
Reporters Didier François and Edouard Elias, then Nicolas Henin and Pierre Torres, were kidnapped within 10 days of each other while reporting from northern Syria in June 2013.
They were released in April 2014.
Henin alerted authorities after seeing a sketch of the alleged perpetrator of the May 2014 Brussels attack that looked very familiar.
In a magazine article published in September 2014, Henin described how Nemmouche had beaten him in the face and terrorized Syrian prisoners.
During his trial, he gave detailed accounts of the repeated torture and mock executions he witnessed while in captivity.
=Investigators say Nemmouche, whose father is unknown, was raised in a French foster home and became radicalised in prison before heading to Syria.
The court also sentenced two other extremists to life imprisonment, convicted in absentia because they were presumed dead.
Belgian extremist Osama Atar, a senior IS commander, has already been sentenced to life in prison for the 2015 Paris attacks claimed by IS that killed 130 people, and the 2016 Brussels bombings carried out by the same group that killed 32 people.
Another defendant was French IS member Salim Bengalem, accused of being the hostages' chief jailer.
The court also sentenced 35-year-old Frenchman Abdelmalek Thanem, accused of being one of the jailers, to 22 years in prison.
None of the journalists recognized Tanem, who said he had been a bodyguard for several ISIS leaders and had slept in the basement of the eye hospital where they were held hostage, but claimed he had never seen them.
But prosecutors say he was one of about 10 French-speaking ISIS jailers.
The court also sentenced 41-year-old Syrian extremist Qais al-Abdallah to 20 years in prison for helping kidnap the journalists and for being a deputy commander in the Syrian city of Raqqa, charges he denies.
