French authorities file terror charges against two Suspected IS members

TIL Desk/World/Paris-French authorities filed terror charges today against two suspected members of the same Islamic State cell that massacred 130 people in Paris last November, a judicial source said. The 29-year-old Algerian Adel Haddadi and the 35-year-old Pakistani Mohamad Usman were charged with “criminal conspiracy with terrorists”, the source said of the men turned over earlier Friday by Austrian authorities.

Investigators believe they travelled to the Greek island of Leros on October 3 on the same boat full of refugees as two men who took part in the November 13 attacks. Those two, thought to be Iraqis, blew themselves up outside the Stade de France stadium, one of a series of brazen assaults by around 10 people around the French capital. But Haddadi and Usman were held up, detained by Greek authorities for 25 days because they had fake Syrian passports.

Once let go, they followed the main migrant trail and made it to Salzburg in western Austria at the end of November — after the Paris attacks.  Austrian police commandos then arrested them in December at a migrant centre a few hours after French authorities informed them the men could be in the country.  After his arrest, Haddadi told investigators that he wanted to go to France to “carry out a mission.