Christophe Caze (22 October 1969–29 March 1996) was a French terrorist and criminal, a former medical student in Lille, France. Caze was one of France's foremost terrorists.
Caze was raised Catholic.[1] A medical student,[1] he travelled to Bosnia in 1992 to practice medicine, working at the Zenica hospital.[2] He converted into Islam and joined the Bosnian mujahideen in the Bosnian War, a unit that fought Jihad against Serbs.[1] He became an extremist, and is reported to have played football with heads of decapitated Serbs.[1] Abu Hamza al-Masri, who was a Bosnian mujahideen, was the religious guide of Christophe Caze.[3] Another French convert was Lionel Dumont, who also joined the mujahideen.
He returned to France a radical Islamist, and became the leader of a GIA group based in Roubaix, the "Gang de Roubaix".[1] The group robbed banks, armoured cars and supermarkets with machine guns and grenade launchers.[1]
In March 1996 the group planned to assassinate international leaders at the G7 meeting in Lille, using a car bomb.[1] French police found the bomb, and then killed four in the group in an apartment shootout.[1] Caze escaped but was shot dead the next day after trying to ram a police checkpoint,[1] on motorway E17 near Kortrijk, Belgium. His address book was found to contain the contact information for Algerian resident in Canada, Fateh Kamel, another Bosnian mujahideen and suspect of militant ties.[4]
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Farmer 2010, p. 158.
- ↑ Kohlmann 2004, p. 189.
- ↑ "Liste des membres impliqués" (in French). ERTA.
- ↑ Deliso 2007, p. 11.
Sources
- Deliso, Christopher (2007). The Coming Balkan Caliphate: The Threat of Radical Islam to Europe and the West. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-275-99525-6.
- Farmer, Brian R. (2010). Radical Islam in the West: Ideology and Challenge. McFarland. p. 158. ISBN 978-0-7864-6210-0.
- Kohlmann, Evan (2004). Al-Qaida's Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network. Berg Publishers. ISBN 978-1-85973-802-3.
- "Christophe Caze: de l'islamisme radical au grand banditisme". Le Temps. 2007-01-16. Archived from the original on 2012-01-14. Retrieved 2012-02-09.
- "L'enfant du Nord mort en barbuConverti à l'islam, Christophe Caze a été tué après l'assaut de Roubaix". Libération. 1996-04-04. Retrieved 2012-02-09.
External links
- "Profile: Roubaix gang" Archived 2011-09-17 at the Wayback Machine
- (in French) "Gang de Roubaix : liste des membres"