An alleged French jihadi network police say groomed one of the November 13 Paris attackers has gone on trial for engaging in terrorist activity.

The seven men, all from Strasbourg, were arrested in 2014 after returning from Syria, though court documents say there was no indication they were planning an attack at that time.

However, they have gone on trial most their most infamous member - Foued Mohamed-Aggad, a man killed in the Bataclan on the night of bloodshed that left 130 people dead.

The seven men (illustrated) are alleged to have been part of a terror cell that had spent time with ISIS in Syria

The defendants in today's trial in Paris - who include Mohamed-Aggad's brother Karim - insisted they had nothing to do with the Paris attacks. Two others died in Syria.

The men say they went to Syria for humanitarian reasons and were forced to join ISIS as one thing after another went wrong with their journey.

All returned to France by April 2014, telling investigators they were desperate to escape.

'Humanitarian or jihadist?' the judge asked each man sharply. With different levels of equivocation, each man said they went to Syria with the intention of helping.

The alleged jihadi group's 10th member, Foued Mohamed-Aggad, was killed in the Bataclan on the night of the November 13 terror attacks

Karim Mohamed-Aggad asked that the group be judged for what they had done, and not for the deadly November 13 attacks.

The group was recruited by Mourad Fares, who once boasted of grooming dozens of French citizens to join jihadists in Syria and who was arrested separately in late 2014 by French authorities.

The Strasbourg men uniformly blamed their plight on Fares, who was not among those on trial Monday.

Fares did not meet the group at the border as they arrived in Syria, they told investigators - instead, they said they were picked up by members of the group later known as ISIS and said they had little choice but to go along.

'We were had by smooth talk. Islam was used to trap me like a wolf.

'When we arrived there, it was clear to me that the people there had nothing to do with Islam,' Karim Mohamed-Aggad told investigators, according to court documents.

He did not know, however, if his brother felt the same.

'It is obvious that the shadow of Fouad Mohamed-Aggad hangs over this case,' said Eric Lefebvre, lawyer for defendant Mohamed Hattay.