Dutch Court Agrees to Return Terror Suspect to France

W460

Dutch judges agreed Thursday to send a wanted Frenchman back to his home country where he faces accusations of involvement in a foiled terror attack.

Police raided an apartment in Rotterdam in late March at France's request where they arrested Anis Bahri, and found about 45 kilos (almost 100 pounds) of ammunition.

Bahri is suspected of planning to carry out an attack in France for the Islamic State group along with Reda Kriket, another suspect detained near Paris a few days before him.

"The court doesn't see any reason to refuse handing you back (to French authorities) and so approves the request," judge Hans Kijlstra told the public court hearing in Amsterdam.

Bahri, 32, had sought to fight his return to France, saying he feared he would be sentenced to life imprisonment and mistreated in a French jail.

But the court rejected his pleas, and stressed that no proceedings were being brought against him in the Netherlands.

"Based on the information available to us about detention conditions in France, we are unable to conclude that there's a real danger of such treatment," judge Kijlstra said in his verdict.

The Dutch decision cannot be appealed, the Amsterdam court said, and a date for Bahri's return had not been decided.

Bahri, who wore a blue shirt and his hair slicked back was arrested in a Rotterdam street on March 27 on a French request.

Police found 45 kilograms of ammunition including AK-47 assault rifle rounds in his apartment.

The raid on the apartment where Bahri was staying followed the November attacks in Paris and the bombings of the Brussels airport and metro on March 22.

He is not wanted in connection with either of those attacks claimed by the Islamic State group.

Both he and Kriket are believed however to have traveled to Syria around the end of 2014 and beginning of 2015, according to French prosecutor Francois Moulin.

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