France frets over internal threat two years after attacks in Paris
PARIS — Two years after militants killed 130 people in coordinated attacks across Paris, French officials said there remains an unprecedented level of “internal” threat from both within and outside the country.
With the Islamic State group losing ground in Iraq and Syria, hundreds of French citizens — and in some cases their children — have started to return to France, leaving the government in a quandary over how to deal with them.
For the first time as president, Emmanuel Macron was scheduled to pay tribute on Monday to the victims of the mass shootings and suicide bombing that took place across Paris and in the city’s northern suburb of SaintDenis on Nov 13, 2015.
The attacks, the deadliest on French soil since World War II, prompted the country to strike back, joining international military operations targeting IS and other extremist groups in Iraq, Syria, Libya and elsewhere.
There has also been the passage of more stringent French legislation, with the most recent law, effective this month, giving police extended powers to search properties, Laurent Nunez, head of France’s internal intelligence agency DGSI conduct electronic eavesdropping and shut mosques or other locations suspected of preaching hatred.
Conservative politicians said the regulations don’t go far enough, while human rights groups express alarm, saying security forces are being given too much freedom to curtail rights.
According to the Interior Ministry, extraordinary measures have helped intelligence agencies thwart more than 30 attacks in the last two years. Last week, the police arrested nine people and another was apprehended in Switzerland in a coordinated counterterrorism operation.
“What worries us are plans for terrorist attacks prepared by teams that are still operating in fighting zones in Syria and Iraq,” Laurent Nunez, head of France’s internal intelligence agency DGSI, told French daily Le Figaro in a rare interview.
What worries us are plans for terrorist attacks prepared by teams that are still operating in fighting zones in Syria and Iraq.”
Homegrown risk
The risk of a homegrown attack also remains strong, with a risk of more attacks from isolated individuals using “low-cost” methods such as cars or knives to kill, he said.
The hypothesis of a carbomb attack or suicide bomber cannot be excluded either although his services had not uncovered any such plan, he said.
Of particular concern is what to do about hundreds of French citizens who went to fight with IS and may now seek to return home, now that the militant group has lost nearly all the territory its self-proclaimed caliphate ruled in Syria and Iraq.
“We know that the will of the jihadists to take action is intact,” Nunez said.