French jihadist Clain killed in Syria: U.S.-led coalition

CAIRO – 1 March 2019: Veteran French jihadist Fabien Clain, who broadcast a recording claiming the Nov. 2015 attacks on Paris, was announced killed on Friday by the U.S.-led coalition fighting in Syria.

Clain was announced dead after a coalition strike against ISIS’ last enclave in eastern Syria.

“A coalition strike killed an active ISIS media official named Abu Anas al Faransi, also known as Fabien Clain, in Baghouz," the coalition said in a statement posted on its Twitter feed late on Thursday.

France Info radio and BFM TV reported that Clain was killed and his brother after a coalition strike in Baghouz. U.S. and French sources said at the time the coalition was verifying the report.

Clain is a longtime militant, jailed in the past for recruiting jihadist fighters and believed by French authorities to have fled to Syria in 2015.

They believe he played a bigger role in the Nov. 13 2015 attacks than simply recording the claim. A squad of gunmen and suicide bombers killed 129 people and injured more than 350 in the attack on entertainment venues in the French capital.

Clain converted to Islam in the late 1990s. Like his younger brother, he is believed by French police to have become radicalised in the early 2000s when he lived in the southern city of Toulouse where he frequented radical networks.

He was involved in the militant recruitment "Artigat cell", French officials have said. Members of that cell were believed to have been mentored by Salafist preacher Olivier Corel, known locally as the "white emir".