Paris shooting has little effect on Le Pen’s bid

LAST-MINUTE POLL

past 10 years, left-wing and right-wing governments have done everything they can for us to lose it.

“We need a presidency that acts and protects us,” she said from her Paris campaign headquarters. “Elected French president, I would immediately, and with no hesitation, carry out the battle plan against Islamist terrorism and against judicial laxity.”

Matthieu Croissandeau, editor of Nouvel Obs magazine, said the French are now thicker-skinned after two years of bloodshed.

“The French are unfortunately getting used to terror attacks on home soil and I don’t think this latest one created the shock and awe that might have made a significant difference,” he said.

Meanwhile, pressure rose on the authorities Friday to explain why the gunman was released after only 24 hours when he was detained two months ago for questioning over threats to kill police.

A handwritten note praising the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was found next to Karim Cheurfi’s body after he shot dead one policeman and wounded two others with a Kalashnikov on Thursday night.

Cheurfi, 39, was killed when police returned fire. A French national, he had a long criminal record, and had served 13 years in prison for attempted murder before being freed in 2014. He was jailed in 2003 after shooting and wounding two policemen.

His former lawyer, JeanLaurent Panier, described him as “an introverted loner who lived with his mother.” Police searched his home in the eastern Paris suburb of Chelles as three members of his family were taken into custody.

ISIL claimed responsibility for the shooting within hours, suggesting that the terrorist group knew the gunman and may have directed the attack.

Its statement described him as a “soldier” and called him by the pseudonym Abu Yussuf al-Belgiki (the Belgian), which puzzled investigators because he had no known connection with Belgium.

Cheurfi was never flagged as an Islamist radical in prison. Neither was he on the main terrorism watchlist, despite appearing on the intelligence services’ radar as a potential Islamist suspect at the end of last year, security sources said.

At that time, police were tipped off that he wanted to “kill police officers to avenge Muslims killed in Syria,” Le Monde newspaper reported.

He was also seeking weapons and a way of reaching an ISIL contact in Iraq or Syria.

In January, however, he was added to a radicalization and terror prevention alert list, created in 2015 after the Charlie Hebdo attacks to better keep tabs on individuals likely to carry out attacks.

The file contains 16,000 names, including 4,000 considered particularly dangerous.