French investigators have identified a Syrian-based extremist with Belgian and Moroccan nationalities who is thought to have plotted the attacks in Paris and Brussels, sources close to the case told the AFP on Tuesday. Oussama Atar, 32, believed to be a member of the Islamic State group, was already a suspect in the March 22 attacks on Brussels but has now been linked to the Nov. 13 atrocities in Paris last year. "He's the only coordinator from Syria to have been identified during the investigations," one of the sources told the AFP. French investigators have long suspected that the Paris attacks, in which teams of militants killed 130 people, were coordinated by one or several people from Syria, but they have not named anyone before now. Atar, believed to use the pseudonym Abou Ahmad, is a cousin of the El Bakraoui brothers who blew themselves up in the Brussels airport and metro attacks. Another two cousins, Moustapha and Jawad Benhattal, were arrested on June 18 on suspicion of plan

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen on Wednesday said Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election was "good news" for France. "I repeat, the election of Donald Trump is good news for our country," said Le Pen, who will be the anti-immigration National Front's candidate in France's 2017 presidential election. Le Pen, 48, was one of the first French politicians to react to Trump's stuing victory. “Congratulations to the new president of the United States Donald Trump and to the free American people!” she said [see below]. In her brief remarks, Le Pen said a Trump White House would assure that the sweeping Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the US and EU would be rejected. Expects improved relations with Russia She added that "more generally, wild globalisation" would be tamed, and she predicted that inteational relations would improve, "notably with Russia". Le Pen said Trump would rein in "the warlike interventions that are the source of the

A refugee and migrant shelter with beds for 400 single men opened Thursday in northe Paris, part of an ongoing drive to take asylum-seekers off French streets after the demolition of the Calais "Jungle". “Only a few migrants came here this moing”, said FRANCE 24’s Charlotte Boitiaux, who was at the scene on Thursday moing and saw five men entering the new shelter. “Most migrants in Paris have already been evacuated from the Stalingrad camp to other shelters outside the city. A local official told me that new arrivals were expected as soon as word spreads about this new shelter”, Boitiaux added. The centre, in a disused railway yard near Gare du Nord station, will take in 50-80 people a day -- the estimated number of migrants that arrive in Paris daily, most of whom end up sleeping rough. They will spend up to 10 days at the site where they will receive medical care and advice on seeking asylum before being transferred to a French "Welcome Centre". "The idea is to create a place

A group of 170 lawyers representing the victims of the November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris have requested their clients receive additional compensation from an insurance fund set up by the French govement for the “emotional distress” they suffered. The attacks, which targeted outdoor cafés, a concert hall and a football stadium in and around the French capital, claimed the lives of a total of 130 people and left hundreds others injured. In the request, lawyers for the victims argued their clients should receive additional compensation for the “very considerable distress” they suffered on that fateful night, which “shifted in the space of a few seconds from a moment of fun or festivities to a scene of war”. They also asked that the victims’ families be compensated for the hardship they endured while waiting for news of their loved ones, specifically during “the time that passed between when they leaed of the event and confirmation that their relatives were present at the scene of the

French bishops pleaded for forgiveness Monday for the "guilty silence" of the Catholic Church following months of damaging revelations over the sexual abuse of children by priests. The Church in France has been rocked by allegations that the Archbishop of Lyon, Philippe Barbarin, covered up the abuse of Scouts and failed to remove a priest when he became aware he had sexually abused the boys a quarter of a century ago. The scandal was the worst to hit the Church in France since 2001, when a bishop was given a three-month suspended jail sentence for failing to inform authorities about a paedophile priest. Barbarin, who has proclaimed his iocence, remains in his post, but the image of one of the French Catholic Church's most media-friendly figures has been taished by the scandal. Archbishop of Paris Andre Vingt-Trois told worshippers at a "time for prayer and penitence" during the bishops' autumn conference in the southweste pilgrimage town of Lourdes on Monday that the Church had

France's green party EELV on Monday elected MEP and former Greenpeace activist Yaick Jadot as its candidate for next year's presidential election. Jadot, 49, won the party's primary with 54 percent of the vote, defeating fellow MEP Michele Rivasi who took 40.75 percent. An environmentalist and humanitarian who coordinated Greenpeace campaigns in France between 2002 and 2008, Jadot was elected to the European Parliament in 2009. Cecile Duflot, a former ecology minister in President Francois Hollande's Socialist govement, had been considered the frontruer but was knocked out in the first round of the EELV party primary on October 19. Jadot was the surprise wier, scoring 35.6 percent to Rivasi's 30 percent. Tuout in Monday's runoff was 80 percent, some 10 percentage points higher than for the first round. The presidential vote is set for April 23 and May 7, with centre-right former prime minister Alain Juppe tipped to win. Duflot, who was the party's national secretary from 2010

President François Hollande on Saturday acknowledged that France bore "broad responsibility" for the intement of thousands of Roma by the World War II Vichy regime and in the early months of the post-war govement. "The day has come, and this truth must be told," Hollande said in the first presidential visit to the main intement camp for Roma, located in Montreuil-Bellay, central France. "The (French) Republic acknowledges the suffering of travelling people who were inteed and admits that it bears broad responsibility," Hollande said. Roma, also known as gypsies, were brutally persecuted in the Holocaust, paralleling the systematic murder of Jews. Estimates of how many died vary widely, between 220,000 and half a million. The Vichy regime is the term for the govement set up in France -- but under de-facto Nazi control -- after the French surrender to Germany in 1940. It fell in late 1944 when the allied forces reconquered France and General Charles de Gaulle set up a provisio

Fred Dewilde was at the Bataclan music hall on the ill-fated night of November 13, 2015, when more than 90 people were massacred. As the one-year aiversary nears, he tells FRANCE 24 how writing a graphic novel helped him on the road to recovery. The drawings are in black and white and the language used is strong, at times almost overwhelming. For Fred Dewilde, who survived last year’s terrorist attack at the Bataclan music hall, the easiest way to speak of the unspeakable has been to express himself by creating his graphic novel, “Mon Bataclan” (My Bataclan). Dewilde says that using words and above all symbols to create the 48-page work have served as a therapy of sorts, helping him process his harrowing experience at the Parisian concert hall. “I’m not someone who is uncomfortable with words, but I reflect before I speak. It’s the opposite when it comes to drawing, it’s a lot more instinctive. It’s clearly helped me comprehend what I’ve been through,” the 49-yea

French police have begun a vast operation to check the “administrative status” of hundreds of migrants amassed in a makeshift camp in northeaste Paris, days after thousands of people were moved from a larger camp in Calais. Officers backed by riot police converged Monday moing on the streets around Stalingrad subway station, where an estimated 2,000 people are gathered on the pavements. Police were seen carrying out checks on the migrants, possibly in preparation for a future evacuation of the site. Pictures tweeted by FRANCE 24's Charlotte Boitiaux highlighted the camp's dire sanitary conditions. Migrant camps routinely sprout up in Paris, are cleared out, and then sprout up again. Paris regional authorities say 19,000 migrants have been shifted to temporary housing since June 2015. The makeshift camps have become visible symbols of the country's struggle to accommodate migrants and refugees seeking better lives in Europe. On Saturday, President François Hollande vowed to

Fresh fires bued inside the Calais 'Jungle' Wednesday as French authorities said they were wrapping up a major operation to evacuate and demolish the notorious shantytown. The operation passed off peacefully for the most part, though some migrants torched tents and shelters in a last act of defiance as their hopes of a new life in Britain evaporated. Fabiee Buccio, the regional prefect, said it was "mission accomplished" for the operation to evacuate the thousands of migrants living in the squalid shantytown. “This is the end of the Jungle,” she added. But charities said many unaccompanied minors had not been processed and FRANCE 24’s reporter at the scene said many migrants remained in the camp. “There are definitely still people in the Jungle tonight,” said Catherine Norris-Trent, after walking through the camp on Wednesday afteoon. “I spoke to some of the migrants and they said they intended to stay there until the bitter end.” A total of 5,596 adults and childr

Hundreds of police officers converged on the National Assembly in central Paris on Wednesday to protest an ever-increasing workload, outdated equipment and rules restricting their ability to defend themselves. The protest follows almost 10 days of nightly demonstrations in cities across France, spontaneously organised on social media by officers who view both the govement and the police hierarchy as “out of touch”. At the end of the day’s protest, the govement promised an extra €250 million, and a review of officers’ rights to defend themselves when under attack. Earlier, a small group of protesting officers, off duty from their normal beat in Versailles, told FRANCE 24 they were “at the end of their tether” after “decades of neglect by changing govements that have eroded our ability to function properly in a job we love”. “We work in filthy, run-down police stations, we have to provide much of our own equipment – business cards and even pens. We don’t hav

Dozens of migrants stranded in the Calais "Jungle", some of them children, desperately sought a way out Thursday as diggers begin tearing down the last remaining shelters in the but-out camp in northe France. To view this video on your mobie device, click here. A day after the official operation to evict the migrants came to a dramatic end, with fires ripping through the shantytown, around 100 people were still waiting to know their fate. The interior ministry said Wednesday that nearly 5,600 migrants had been taken into shelters around France or accepted into Britain – out of the 6,400 estimated by authorities to have been living in the camp up until this week. Officials hailed the operation as a success, saying the informal part of the camp was now empty. But scores of migrants were left behind, some of whom slept in the biting cold, huddled together in sleeping bags. Others camped out in the hangar where migrants were registered this week for relocation. “There are still ple