Second French national identified in IS execution video
A second Frenchman has been identified as one of the executioners featured in a video of the killing of 18 Syrian soldiers and US aid worker Peter Kassig by the Islamic State (IS) armed group.
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The second man goes by the name of Abu Othman and comes from Villiers-sur-Marne, a town on the eastern outskirts of Paris, a source told the AFP news agency on Wednesday.
But the Reuters news agency cited a different source who named him as Michaël Dos Santos from Champigny-sur-Marne next door to Villiers.
Earlier President François Hollande, on a visit to the Australian capital Canberra, confirmed that a second French national had been identified, following the earlier naming of 22-year-old Maxime Hauchard, from Normandy in northern France.
Hollande said it was not clear exactly what role the men played in the beheadings.
"The judicial system will have to establish this," he told a press conference.
Hauchard left for Syria in August 2013 after a stay in Mauritania in 2012 after apparently
becoming radicalised online, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.
About 1,000 French nationals are thought to have taken part in the conflict in Syria and Iraq, with 375 currently there, the government has said.
At least 36 have died.
None of the other 17 IS fighters who appear in the video with their faces uncovered has been identified, although a Belgian newspaper says that a Belgian who left for the region in 2012 could be among them.
A British national, nicknamed “Jihadi John” by the UK media, is suspected of being the man who appears with his face covered and Kassig’s head at his feet, and is also believed to be the murderer of the hostages Steven Sotloff and James Foley.
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