France detains Belgian imam Bassam Ayachi suspected of Syria fighting

French authorities have detained and charged a Belgian-based radical imam suspected of fighting with jihadists in Syria, sources said Wednesday.

PARIS: French authorities have detained and charged a Belgian-based radical imam suspected of fighting with jihadists in Syria, sources said Wednesday.

Bassam Ayachi, 72, the founder of the Belgian Islamic Centre in Brussels' largely immigrant district of Molenbeek, was arrested on March 27 in northern France under a warrant issued by a Parisian anti-terrorism judge, one of the sources said.

Franco-Syrian Ayachi was jailed in 2009 on another terrorism-related case before being freed three years later before heading to Syria. The French sources did not say when and how he returned to Europe.

Ayachi, a French national by marriage, was cited last month in the case of a French jihadist fighter arrested after spending time first in Syria then Japan, which deported him to France on March 8. 

The judge who charged the Frenchman in that case then issued a warrant for Ayachi's arrest for suspected association with terrorists in the belief the pair had been in contact in Syria.

Prosecutors did not confirm Ayachi's detention.

Ayachi helped to found the centre at Molenbeek more than 20 years ago but the down at heel district of the Belgian capital hit world headlines as a supposed hotbed of extremism after it emerged that several of the jihadists behind the November 13, 2015 attacks on Paris came from there.

Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam was arrested there in March 2016, near his family home.

In November 2009, police arrested Ayachi with a young French convert to Islam after discovering they were sheltering a group of illegal immigrants in their camper van.

Italian authorities accused the pair of being involved in a network facilitating international terrorism. After three years in jail, they were freed on appeal and returned to Belgium.

In 2016, broadcaster France 2 broadcast a documentary, "The Father, the Son and the Jihad" on the Ayachi family.

The film notably recounted how Ayachi's son, Abdelrahman Ayachi, was killed in action while commanding an Islamist battalion affiliated with Free Syrian Army rebels against the Syrian regime.