Frenchman Gets Prison for Latest Jihad Attempt Abroad

A French appeals court sentenced a man to six years behind bars Tuesday for trying to fight alongside Islamist militants in Mali, his most recent attempt at waging jihad abroad.

Ibrahim Ouattara, a Frenchman of Malian origin, was arrested in central Mali in 2012 as he tried to join up with the jihadists who had captured the north of the country.

"Armed struggle is necessary, and unless someone can prove otherwise I will continue on this path," Ouattara, 27, has said during the case.

The trial court sentenced Ouattara in July 2014 to four years in prison. But prosecutors, who had sought two more years, appealed the decision.

At the time of Ouattara's arrest in Mali he was on conditional release facing allegations he tried and failed several times in 2009 and 2010 to join jihadists in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Somalia.

In March 2014 he was sentenced to seven years behind bars in connection with the 2009 and 2010 efforts to fight for the militants.

The appeals court on Tuesday also sentenced Khalifa Drame, a Franco-Senegalese man, to four years behind bars in the Mali case, after the trial court gave him two and a half years.

Drame had allegedly given his passport to Ouattara and planned to meet up with him in Mali.

A third defendant in the case, Hakim Soukni, had his acquittal confirmed by the appeals court.

Ouattara said in court previously that after a chaotic childhood, growing up without a father, abused by his mother and placed in foster care, he was "always looking for something."

When he converted to Islam at age 16 he "found an answer to (his) questions." But it was online that he discovered jihad.

Jihadist attacks in Paris in January that killed 17 people drew further attention to the problem of radicalised youth in the country.

A series of new French anti-terrorism laws came into effect in February which are aimed at stopping people from travelling out of the country if they are suspected of trying to join jihadist groups.

Some 1,400 people living in France have either joined the jihadist cause in Syria and Iraq or are planning to do so, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said in March.