Djamel Beghal (also

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as Jamel Beghal and Djemal Begal) (; born 2 December 1965) is an Algerian convicted terrorist.France
" '' Frontline''. ''

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''. He is a former French citizen. He married Sylvie, a French citizen, in 1990, while working as a youth worker in Corbeil-Essonnes. In 1997, he moved his family to

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, where Sylvie still lives with their four children. On 28 July 2001, he was arrested at

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while transferring from a flight from Pakistan to a flight to Europe; he held a fake French passport. Over the next two months, he was interrogated by the Emirati police. CAGE, a London-based Islamic activist organization, claimed that Emirati police tortured Beghal during questioning and accused the British and French governments of 'complicity'. No evidence was offered to substantiate those claims other than the testimony of Beghal himself. Beghal confessed to

UAE The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a federal elective monarchy made up of seven emirates, with Abu Dhabi serving as i ...

authorities that he was conspiring to destroy the U.S. embassy in Paris. His confession doomed the plot. After he was extradited to France on 1 October, Beghal retracted his statement, saying that it had been given under torture. In October 2001, Beghal told magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguière that he had visited

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's base in Afghanistan and planned a suicide bomb attack. In March 2005, French authorities convicted Beghal and five others for planning the attacks, and Beghal began serving his 10-year sentence. During his time in prison, he met and mentored fellow prisoners Chérif Kouachi, one of the two brothers who committed the 2015 ''Charlie Hebdo'' shooting, as well as Amedy Coulibaly, who carried out the Fontenay-aux-Roses shooting and Porte de Vincennes siege. Stripped in 2006 of the French citizenship which he had acquired through his marriage, Beghal was released from prison and deported to

Algeria Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger ...

on 16 July 2018.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beghal, Djamel 1965 births Living people People from Bordj Bou Arréridj Algerian emigrants to France Algerian al-Qaeda members French al-Qaeda members People extradited to France People extradited from the United Arab Emirates