"Never has the radicalization been so strong," said antiterrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere, in an interview published in France's Le Figaro newspaper Wednesday.

"We're witnessing, in fact, a transformation of (Islamist terrorist) networks, with much younger new actors, often even minors and therefore much more malleable," said Bruguiere.

That's a change, he said, from classic Islamic radicals in France, who have spawned from North African movements such as the Armed Islamic Group, and have been blamed for killing thousands of Algerians during the country's bloody civil war of the 1990s.

"The converts are undeniably the hardest ones," in terms of their allegiance to radical causes, Bruguiere told Le Figaro. "The conversions today are more rapid and their engagement is more radical."

Young French women converting to Islam are particularly sought after, he added, since foreign radicals can obtain French nationality by marrying them.

Indeed, female suspects emerged among the Islamist radicals who plotted an attack on the eastern French city of Strasbourg in 2000, and in a cell plotting to blow up the U.S. embassy in Paris in 2001.

The judge's comments come just two days after French police rounded up four suspected Islamist radicals in France's Loiret region south of Paris. Two of those arrested were French converts to Islam, believed to be associated with Islamist Safe Bourada, who were arrested last week in a separate sweep.

Eight other Islamist suspects, including two women, were also arrested during a late September sweep of two regions outside Paris.

French media reported that those arrested had plotted to strike the Paris metro, France's DST counterterrorism agency and the Orly airport outside Paris.

Police also found a bomb-making manual in the home of one of the suspects arrested Monday, Le Parisien reported Tuesday.

Bruguiere has specialized in antiterrorism for more than two decades. Besides Islamist radicals, he has pursued the far-left French group, Action Direct. But he is possibly best known for having tracked down and captured Carlos the Jackal, in 1994.

Bruguiere's remarks to Le Figaro offer the latest clue into the thinking and profile of Islamist radicals in Europe. The subject has jumped to the top of analysts' priority lists, following the July bombings in London and the March 2004 terrorist attacks in Madrid.

In both cases, Islamic terrorists targeted countries with governments closely allied to Washington, who participated in the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Indeed, the Madrid train bombings largely contributed to the ousting of former conservative Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who had supported the U.S.-led war in Iraq. The current Socialist government withdrew Spanish forces from Iraq soon after taking office.

But a rash of arrests here in recent months underscores that France's opposition to the Iraq war does not make the country immune to terrorism.

Today, antiterrorist suspects are eyeing a new generation of radicals who have been born and bred in Europe -- or have spent a large part of their lives living on the continent.

They not only include some of the suspects in the London attacks, but also the avowed killers of Dutch film director Theo Van Gogh and Zacarias Massaoui, a French man on trial in the United States in relation to the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Islamist extremists operating in France and elsewhere in Europe have other characteristics, Bruguiere said.

"The hard core can be made up of 50-100 people," the French judge told Le Figaro. "Those have the trajectory of an avowed terrorist. Then there is the circle of engaged radicals who bring financial or material support to the cell."

The outer layer consists of vindictive fundamentalists, he said, who might be recruited for any given cause.

France is no stranger to terrorist attacks. It was a favored target of Algerian Islamists during the 1990s, in retaliation against Paris' perceived support for Algeria's military-backed government.

A new website sponsored by the French government and the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic research notes some 1,500 terrorist attacks since 1965 have targeted France or its interests overseas.

Today, radicals have added an arsenal of new weapons to their disposal, Bruguiere said, including chemical and biological ones, like ricin. In many cases they have been trained to use them in camps in Afghanistan or Georgia.

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