Last Friday, Mohamed M., 20 years old, of Russian origin and raised in France, broke into the institute where he himself had studied in Arras, in the north of the country, and stabbed a teacher to death and injured three people. This Monday, another man of Tunisian origin shot dead two Swedish citizens in Brussels. The two perpetrators of the deaths were booked and sympathized with the Islamic State.
The threat of terrorism returns to Europe in full escalation in the Middle East. Both France and Belgium have raised the alert level to the maximum. In Paris, the Palace of Versailles has been stopped from evacuating twice in three days and there are 7,000 soldiers patrolling the streets. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, was clear yesterday: “All European countries are vulnerable” to this “return of the terrorist threat.”
“A system where the risk of terrorism is totally eradicated will never be possible in a rule of law” and, therefore, we must get used to “living in surveillance,” said the president. Visiting Albania, Macron wanted to warn of the situation facing Europe, at a critical moment in which, in addition to the front in Ukraine, all eyes are now on Israel.
A total of 21 Franco-Israeli citizens have died since last week in Hamas attacks and 11 are missing, probably being held by the terrorist group, according to the latest report from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Macron has said that “everything possible is being done to free” the hostages.
Paris feared that the conflict in the Middle East would extend to French soil, where the largest Jewish community in Europe and also 10% of Muslims live. In two weeks there have been a hundred people arrested in France for anti-Semitic acts, according to Interior data. Macron has not directly linked the attacks in Arras and Brussels to the situation in Israel.
Yes, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, has done so, who has declared that the attack on the Arras institute “is clearly related to the context.” Darmanin, it is not clear whether in a moment of lapse or intentionally, recalled on Saturday that the Government has banned “pro-Hamas demonstrations in France”, in reference to those in support of Palestine.
France and also Sweden, the country of origin of the two people shot in Brussels, had recently been threatened by Al Qaeda. Paris had just banned the abaya, a typical tunic from Arab countries, in schools, in the name of secularism. In the case of Sweden, the threat was about the burning of Korans.
However, the perpetrators of the two attacks have claimed their membership or sympathy for the Islamic State. In the case of the perpetrator of the stabbing in Arras, investigators have found a video on his cell phone that proves it. To one of the teachers he hurt he said: “Who gives you the air you breathe? Who is the only God?”
The anti-terrorist prosecutor revealed these details of the investigation yesterday. He asked another of the teachers he was persecuting: “Call Marianne, call the Republic,” in reference to the female representation that symbolizes the French Republic and freedom.
“It is likely that these attacks will be followed by others, in a kind of snowball effect,” Tore Hamming, an analyst at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization in London, explained to the AFP agency. “So far they all seem to have been carried out by a single person and with little sophistication, but this could change,” he said.
It is the so-called low cost terrorism, more unpredictable, because it is very difficult to know when these individuals are going to take action. “Never before have Sweden and Swedish interests been so threatened as now,” declared the country’s Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson, yesterday. Macron does not believe that there are failures in the intelligence services and the Ministry of the Interior, despite the fact that the alleged murderer of Arras was booked and under surveillance.
The latest attacks open another melon: that of immigration and the monitoring of radicalized foreigners. The perpetrators of both were booked and monitored. In the case of Mohamed M, his brother is even serving time for having participated in an attempted attack on the Elysée. He could not be expelled from the country because when he arrived he was under 13 years old and the law protects minors in these cases.
The French Government has said that it will take measures to expel foreigners who have a suspicious profile or who “do not respect republican values.” In French territory there are 489 people considered dangerous, 300 of them already imprisoned, according to the Interior. Darmanin has said the intelligence services defuse an attack every two months.
France is about to begin examining immigration law, a sensitive issue in a multicultural country where 20% of the population is second or third generation French, with parents or grandparents who emigrated from former colonies, especially Maghrebs. . For the extreme right, this law is too lax; for the left; very hard and restrictive.
Yesterday’s session in the National Assembly well illustrated the challenge that this law faces. After observing a minute of silence in memory of the deceased professor, Darmanin asked to “vote on the law to protect the French”, while Marine Le Pen demanded that the Government “expel all Islamists from France” and the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, asked “national cohesion against terrorism.” She said: “We will not give up training our youth (…) France is standing, the Republic is standing. If we continue, no one can break us.”
