France to vote amid fears after shooting
Authorities to deploy almost 67,000 security personnel to ensure voter safety in first round of presidential election
France goes to the polls tomorrow under heavy security in a presidential election clouded by fears of more terrorism like the attack that left a policeman and his killer dead on the Champs-Elysee in Paris on Thursday.
About 50,000 police officers and gendarmes, and 7,000 soldiers, will be on duty across the country amid fears that ISIL or its sympathisers may try to mount another operation.
Xavier Jugele, 37, was shot dead and two colleagues were wounded, along with a female German tourist, when 39-yearold Karim Cheurfi opened fire with an assault rifle on the police vehicle Jugele was driving. The shooting caused panic among the crowds on one of the world’s most famous avenues. Shoppers, restaurant diners, cinemagoers and spectators at a cabaret show were unable to leave for two hours after the shooting, which happened at about 9pm local time.
One witness, a kitchen assistant who gave his name as Chelloug, said he was leaving a shop when he saw a man get out of a car with a rifle and open fire on a policeman.
“The policeman fell down,” he said. “I heard six shots, I was afraid. I have a two-year-old girl and I thought I was going to die ... he shot straight at the police officer.”
ISIL quickly claimed that it carried out the murder, via its online propaganda agency Amaq, calling Cheurfi a “sol- dier of the caliphate”. But it also named him as Abu Yusuf Al Baljiki, indicating he was Belgian. Yet the name was unknown to the Belgian authorities, raising suspicion among investigators, and some security analysts, that this was an opportunistic claim of responsibility.
Cheurfi was a French national with a history of violence, including previous attacks on police officers in 2001 that earned him a 20-year jail sentence – later reduced to 15 – for attempted murder. A pump-action shotgun and knives were recovered from his car. Investigators also found a copy of the Quran – although there is no evidence he had shown serious interest in religion – and a document referring to ISIL. During a news conference, antiterrorism prosecutor Francois Molins said the paper – described as a note defending ISIL – apparently fell out of Cheurfi’s pocket.
The GPS system of his car revealed entries for the addresses of arms suppliers, the headquarters of a French intelligence agency and a police station in Seine-et-Marne, the area near Paris where he was born and lived.
Some reports suggested the authorities had become aware of encrypted online activity in which he spoke of wanting to kill police officers, but when questioned by police in February, he apparently showed no signs of radicalisation and there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him.
Three members of his family were questioned yesterday. Cheurfi lived with his mother in the multi-ethnic suburb of Chelles, a 30-minute train ride east of Paris, where neighbours described him as a friendless oddball who seemed “like he was from Mars”.
One of them said: “Everyone knew him here. He was someone who had lost all reason, who was psychologically very damaged.”
Another local, Abdel, 23, said Cheurfi had been influenced by his repeated experiences in prison. “He hated the police and France,” he said.
Salim, a family acquaintance, said Cheurfi never went to mosque and he “could hardly use a remote controller for the television. Go on the internet and contact ISIL? I can’t see it”. The murdered policeman was among the officers who responded to the gun and bomb attack on Bataclan concert hall in Paris in November 2015, the most murderous of a wave of the attacks on Paris, which killed 130 people.
Jugele was there again a few days before the first anniversary of the attack when the venue reopened with a concert head- lined by Sting. He had voiced his joy at attending Bataclan’s “symbolic” reopening. “We’re here tonight as witnesses, to defend our civic values. This concert is to celebrate life. To say ‘ No’ to terrorists,” Jugele had said.
French president Francois Hollande visited the hospital where Jugele’s two wounded colleagues were treated. They, and the injured German tourist, were said to be out of danger.
The attack, coinciding with the final televised debate featuring all 11 candidates in the first round of the election, came two days after two men were held in the southern city of Marseilles for allegedly planning a terrorist attack on the election campaign.
An arsenal of guns and explosives was found in a flat rented under false names by Mahiedine Merabet, 29, and Clement Baur, 23, who converted to Islam in his mid-teens.
Both have criminal records and although their past offences were not connected to terrorism, they were known to the intelligence services.