Maxime Hauchard, the Frenchman identified as a jihadi probably involved in the beheadings of an American and Syrian captives, is a 22-year-old from Normandy who converted to Islam at 17.
Hauchard appeared in the Islamic State (Isis) video which on Sunday showed the killings of 18 Syrian captives and American aid worker Peter Kassig. In the video he is standing in a lineup of jihadis and is not masked. Hauchard, who took on the nom de guerre Abu Abdallah el-Faransi, reflecting his French citizenship, was recognised by French writer and journalist David Thomson who tweeted a picture of him.
Hauchard is from Le Bosc-Roger-en-Roumois, which has a population of 3,250. He has never sought to conceal his affiliation with Islamist fighters, and has posted photos on social media of himself carrying weapons. In July he gave an interview to BFMTV in which he described how he became interested in Islam via the internet. He travelled to Syria in August last year to help create a caliphate. He said he had travelled alone and without assistance.
Dressed in black, Hauchard described the month-long training in Syria as “not a holiday, but like a holiday”. He said there were more French nationalists at the Isis headquarters in Raqqa, but the group there was mostly made up of Arabs, including Egyptians, Libyans, Tunisians, Moroccans and Saudis.
In the interview, Hauchard said he had been deployed in Mosul, the northern Iraqi town overrun by Isis in June, and added that he was about to go on a more “spectacular” mission. He also said he expected to die. “My personal goal is martyrdom, obviously,” he said.
His uncle, Pascal, said he was aware that the youth had travelled to Syria but was puzzled as to his motives. “I don’t get this. My nephew would never chop off a head, it’s not possible. He wouldn’t hurt a fly,” he told BFMTV. A friend suggested Hauchard was a “weak and easily influenced” person who had become committed to radical Islam after watching online videos.
The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said there was a “very strong probability that a French national took part in carrying out these abject crimes” seen on the Isis video. According to Cazeneuve, the Frenchman was most likely to be Hauchard, who left for Syria after a stay of a few months in Mauritania in 2012.
French investigators say Hauchard received religious training in Mauritania, then went to Syria via the Turkish town of Gaziantep, posing as a humanitarian worker.
The number of French jihadis has been increasing steadily and according to Cazeneuve totals 930 people. Investigators are checking whether a second Frenchman may have been involved in the latest beheadings.
