PARIS: French authorities have arrested a 20-year-old Afghan national on suspicion of having ties to an ISIS-affiliated group, according to a foreign news agency.
The country’s anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office confirmed that the suspect faces charges of joining a terrorist organization and financing terrorism. He was detained last week in the city of Lyon and has been placed under judicial custody.
Investigators believe the man maintained contact with ISIS-Khorasan, a regional branch of the Islamic State active in Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia, including Uzbekistan.
Authorities allege that he helped promote the group’s propaganda, transferred funds to its networks, and translated or circulated its messages online.
ISIS-K has been responsible for several deadly attacks in Afghanistan and Russia, including the March 2024 assault on a concert hall in Moscow that killed 150 people.
According to the French newspaper Le Parisien, the Afghan suspect arrived in France a few years ago and was arrested by the DGSI, the country’s domestic intelligence agency, from a detention center in Lyon.
The report added that he was already under investigation for spreading extremist ideologies and was actively producing and sharing radical propaganda on social media platforms such as TikTok and Snapchat.
