PARIS, Dec. 5 (UPI) -- The trial of an alleged member of an Islamic extremist group opened in northern France Monday.
On the dock is Lionel Dumont, 34, a French convert to Islam.
Dumont is charged with being a member of the country's notorious "Roubaix gang" -- a group of extremists accused of conducting series of holdups and armed attacks in the northern city of Lille in 1996. The men aimed to finance efforts to join the insurgency in Bosnia.
Police arrested several gang members that year, but Dumont managed to flee.
He was arrested in 1997 in Bosnia, where he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but escaped in 1999.
He remained at large until 2003, when he was seized by German police in 2003. In 2001, a French court sentenced him to life in prison in absentia.
A Catholic by birth, Dumont converted to Islam after making several trips to Muslim countries.
Some French anti-terrorist experts say that among Islamists here, converts can be some of the most radical.
