French court charges three suspected jihadists back from Syria

The three Frenchman who were the subject of a botched arrest effort earlier this week were charged Saturday with planning terrorist acts, according to their lawyer.  

The border between Turkey and Syria. REUTERS/Murad Sezer

The trio had been suspected of having joined militants in Syria and were detained in August after crossing back into Turkey.

French police were expecting to take them into questioning on Tuesday after Turkish officials sent them on a flight back to France.

However, the three men walked free after landing in the southern French city of Marseille as French intelligence officers mistakenly waited hundreds of miles away at Paris’s Orly airport.

The three men, who have all been on the radar of French counterterrorism officials and are subject to another investigation that opened in September 2013, surrendered on Wednesday to police in Le Caylar, near the southern city of Montpellier.

Their lawyer Pierre Dunac said the three suspects strongly denied the allegations but have admitted to travelling to Syria.

One of the charged is Abdelouahab el-Baghdadi, 29, the brother-in-law of Toulouse jihadist Mohamed Merah who was killed by police after a murder spree in 2012 left seven people, including three children, dead.

A second suspect is Imad Jjebali, a childhood friend of Merah, who was convicted in 2009 for ties to a jihadi network in Iraq.