(AFP) Five men went on trial in France on Monday charged with holding four French journalists hostage for the Islamic State jihadist group in war-torn Syria more than a decade ago.
IS emerged in 2013 in the chaos that followed the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, slowly gaining ground before declaring a caliphate in large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
The jihadists abducted a number of foreign journalists and aid workers before US-backed forces eventually defeated the group in 2019.
Reporters Didier Francois and Edouard Elias, and then Nicolas Henin and Pierre Torres, were abducted 10 days apart while reporting from northern Syria in June 2013.
The journalists were held by the IS group for 10 months until their release in April 2014.
