Six stripped of French passports

Paris, Feb. 23, (dpa/GNA) - France has stripped six people of their passports, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Monday, as French authorities seek to block residents from traveling abroad to join jihadist groups in Iraq and Syria.

The passports were confiscated for an initial period of six months, French media said, based on reports that their holders were planning imminent trips to Syria.

Cazeneueve said the suspect extremists were aged between 23 and 28. Some of them had traveled to Syria in the past. Investigations are underway to confiscate the passports of 40 others, he added.

The move is the first of its kind under a new French counterterrorism laws that were passed in November. One of its provisions involves an exit ban on French nationals "planning to participate in terrorist activities abroad."

Authorities pledged to prioritize implementation of the legislation in the wake of terror attacks in Paris in early January that left 20 people, including three gunmen, dead.

At least one of the gunmen, a French man of Algerian descent who carried out the attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, had previously travelled to Yemen to receive weapons training from the local al-Qaeda chapter there.

France has struggled to stem the flow of residents traveling abroad to join extremist networks and become foreign fighters. Authorities estimate that some 1,400 Islamists from France are linked to the conflicts in Iraq and Syria. GNA EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE