Terrorist by Association

For The New Republic, Scott Sayare profiles a Franco-Algerian man named Abdelkader Merah, who was sentenced to 20 years in a French prison last year for his involvement with his brother, Islamist extremist Mohammed Merah. Mohammed, who died in a shootout with police, killed several people in several 2012 attacks. Afterwards, the government passed a “terrorist association law,” for which Abdelkader Merah was prosecuted: “The association de malfaiteurs terroriste statute remains the primary tool of counterterror magistrates today. Its language is notoriously abstruse, but in essence the law goes beyond outlawing terrorist violence, per se, to punish the intent to commit it,” Sayare writes.

Read at The New Republic

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