The Special Assize Court in Paris sentenced Mehdi Nemmouche to life in prison on Friday after finding him guilty of taking several French journalists hostage in Syria for the Islamic State (IS) terror group in 2013.
Nemmouche showed no reaction at the sentencing.
Assise Court President Laurent Raviot gave no motivation for the court's decision.
The 39-year-old Nemmouche was accused, along with four other jihadists (two of whom are presumed dead), of kidnapping journalists Didier François, Edouard Elias, Nicolas Hénin and Pierre Torres in Syria for IS in 2013. Only in April 2014, after months of torture, including physical and psychological violence, starvation and mock executions, were the four released again.
At the time, Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) kidnapped quite a few Western aid workers and journalists. Several of them, including US journalist James Foley and British aid worker David Haines, were executed. The macabre images of their executions in orange attire went viral.
Mehdi Nemmouche was the first in a long list of IS jihadists who returned from Syria to carry out attacks in Europe.
On 24 May 2014, one month after the four journalists in question returned to France, he coldly shot four people dead at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.
When he was arrested in Marseille a few days later, his photo made it into the press, and his former victims immediately recognised him as ‘Abu Omar,’ one of their captors in Syria.
