The NYT's reports on a French ring that sent fighters to "homegrown" Al Qaeda

The New York times continues to routinely describe Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia [i.e, Iraq] as "homegrown". We expose this campaign here. For a recent example of the NYT's continuing use of the "homegrown" descriptor, see page 2 of this article.

In light of this, this article, also from the New York Times, is strange:

May 15, 2008

French Court Convicts 7 for Helping to Send Youths to Join Jihadist Fight in Iraq

By KATRIN BENNHOLD

PARIS — A Paris court sentenced seven men to prison terms of up to seven years on Wednesday for helping to send French youths to fight alongside insurgents in Iraq, ending a four-year investigation into a jihadist recruitment ring.

The men — five French, one Algerian and one Moroccan — were tried on charges including criminal association with intent to commit terrorism.

Jean-Julien Xavier-Rolai, the prosecutor, had accused the group of sending about a dozen young Frenchmen to join Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia who was killed in an American airstrike in 2006, after funneling them through radical religious establishments in Syria and Egypt.

If Al Qaeda in Iraq is homegrown, why are they getting fighters from France, after those fighters pass through radical religious establishments in Syria and Egypt?

Furthermore, the article says the French sponsors were arrested in 2005, and had been under police surveillance for a least a year at that time. So their activities must have started very soon after the 2003 invasion.

I don't know about you, but this sure doesn't sound like a homegrown Iraqi group to me.