France blocks five sites accused of 'condoning terrorism'

France has blocked five websites accused of “condoning terrorism,” the interior ministry said on Monday, the first time the French new government has used its broad new security powers since the January Paris attacks.

The banning order was given to Internet service providers, who had 24 hours to take "all necessary measures to block the listing of these addresses" under the new rules. 

One of the sites — al-Hayat Media Center — is accused of having links to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) armed group, the ministry said. The site islamic-news.info has also been blocked since the end of last week, broadcaster France24 reported. Users trying to reach the site find a message that reads, “You are being redirected to this official website since your computer was about to connect with a page that provokes terrorist acts or condones terrorism publicly.”

The new government powers were introduced as part of a package of security laws that were approved by parliament in November 2014 and took effect in February.

Critics argued that the latest measures could breach citizens' rights by bypassing the need for a judge to issue the banning orders. Octave Klaba, who founded the company that hosts Islamic-news.info, said in a message posted on Twitter that he wasn’t informed of the government’s action, and called the measure a “nuclear bomb,” according to France24. 

Other powers include the right to stop people from leaving the country if they are suspected of trying to join armed groups such as ISIL, which controls large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq. Six French citizens between the ages of 23 and 28 had their passports and identity cards confiscated in February for a period of six months under the measure. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said at the time that 40 more people were likely to be barred from traveling in the coming weeks. 

Cazeneuve visited California last month to meet with major technology companies in a bid to improve information sharing between companies and governments about online recruiting networks. He was due to meet with Internet companies again in Paris in early April.

The French interior ministry has set up a warning system through which friends and family can alert authorities if they suspect that someone they know is being recruited to fight with ISIL or another armed group. Cazeneuve said last month that the ministry had received tips on more than 1,000 such cases, and that “several dozen” planned trips to Syria and Iraq had been prevented as a result of the new system. 

Some 1,400 people living in France have either joined the wars in Syria and Iraq or are planning to do so, according to Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

"There have already been nearly 90 French people who have died out there with a weapon in their hands, fighting against our own values," Valls said in an interview on French television.

Al Jazeera and Agence France-Presse