France activates high terror alert after Al-Qaeda video is released
In the past 18 months, France has been the scene of seven jihadist attacks and security forces have prevented five others. France is once again on terror alert. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has written to police chiefs to ask them to be "vigilant" this summer in the face of the terrorist threat. This call for increased vigilance follows the release on the internet on 15 July of a video posted by a propaganda arm of the Al-Qaeda terrorist group. The 40-minute video, which the Ministry of the Interior stresses has "significant potential for dissemination", mentions France as a target of the terrorist group.
Al-Qaeda released a video on 15 July aimed at "condemning the blasphemy embodied in the Muhammad cartoons" and "vilifying France", the minister wrote in the note. He therefore called on police chiefs to maintain a "high level" of vigilance in July and August, especially in the context of the "partial resumption of economic and cultural activities". "We must be particularly vigilant against these anathemas" that "stimulate the endogenous threat", the minister said. Although the country has entered a phase of "economic and cultural recovery", Gérald Darmanin is concerned. According to the Interior Ministry, the fear of a new wave of COVID-19 cases is aggravated by the weight of a still-present terrorist threat. This threat would come from French soil, explains AFP, citing "a security source" with profiles "permeable and receptive to propaganda hostile to France".
The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor's Office has decided to open a preliminary investigation into the images, for "terrorist criminal association" and "provocation to acts of terrorism by an online public communication service". Emmanuel Macron appears on numerous occasions, either through excerpts from his speech of 2 October 2020 at Les Mureaux "on the fight against separatism", or during the reception of heads of state from the Arab world presented as traitors to the Islamist cause. Gérald Darmanin is also quoted in several places, notably in an interview in which he spoke of the closure of mosques considered to be radicalised.
In little more than a month, France has suffered three knife attacks. At the end of September, a 25-year-old Pakistani man wounded two people outside the former headquarters of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris. On 16 October, an 18-year-old Chechen refugee beheaded a history and geography teacher, Samuel Paty, on the outskirts of Paris. And on 29 October, a 21-year-old Tunisian, who had entered Europe a few weeks earlier via the Italian island of Lampedusa, killed three people in the Notre-Dame basilica in Nice.
These threats come against a highly tense backdrop in France, which is once again hotly debating the issue of Islamism in the country, as it did at the height of the Charlie Hebdo trial in January 2015. The authorities also fear a similar effect next September with the trial, this time of the Paris attacks of 13 November 2015, committed by several commandos at the Bataclan concert hall and other bars and venues in Paris that left 130 dead and hundreds injured.
With presidential elections just around the corner, in which the issue of security will play an important role for voters. The latest attack in France fuels the political fight. Security, terrorism, Islamism and immigration are key issues in the 2022 presidential election duel between Macron and his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen. In any case, it comes at a time when the right-wing opposition, a field in which President Emmanuel Macron is seeking to gain a foothold in the run-up to the presidential elections.
The January 2015 jihadist attacks on the French satirical magazine and a Jewish supermarket in Paris that left 17 people dead were the first in a terrible series of extremist attacks that have deeply marked - and changed - France. Since 2012, the number of victims of attacks linked to Islamic fundamentalism has risen to 269. The latest high-profile case that shocked the entire country occurred six months ago. A teacher, Samuel Paty, was brutally beheaded by a young man of Chechen origin. The extremist murdered the teacher for teaching an image of Mohammed in a school. The profile of the killer matches the characteristics of the attackers in recent cases. A man who attacks alone and with no previous record. For this reason, the French authorities have increased security in police stations, the places where these "lone wolves" usually attack.
The French government presented a new anti-terrorism bill a few months ago, the ninth since the worst wave of jihadist attacks in the country began six years ago. The measure, passed in March, was backed by 347 votes in favour. The main aim of the reform is to control hate speech on the internet, a key medium in the process of recruitment and radicalisation. The bill will also strengthen the monitoring of religious centres, with the possibility of closing some if they disseminate extremist ideas.
The measure, which has been used experimentally since 2015, allows the automated processing of internet connection data, with the intention of detecting potential terrorist threats. The new law extends its use to web addresses (URLs) and extends the duration of computer data collection to two months, instead of one month as before.
