2023-10-15 19:12:33
The educational community and the whole country would have done well without this anniversary. Almost three years to the day after the assassination of Samuel Paty, another teacher fell victim to the attacks of a radicalized young man. Dominique Bernard, a French teacher at the Gambetta Carnot school complex in Arras, was killed on Friday, plunging the entire country into fear.
The main suspect, Mohammed M., was taken into custody with ten other people and gave no explanation. File S, the main suspect had been checked by the DGSI the day before the attack, in particular to check his phone. “Predicting the attack would have been impossible. If we had wanted to neutralize this individual, we would have had to incarcerate him for unconstitutional reasons. This is unthinkable in a rule of law,” recalls Alain Rodier, president of the French intelligence research center, while welcoming the fact that the main suspect was taken alive, to enable “advance the investigation.”
Helplessness in the face of the actions of isolated individuals
Especially since when faced with a “lone wolf” who does not belong to a structured organization, surveillance is necessarily more delicate, underlines Alain Chouet, former head of security intelligence at the DGSE. “I have difficulty seeing how to prevent these isolated people from committing brutal acts. To monitor someone 24 hours a day, you need a team of 12 people and three vehicles, specifies the expert. There are not enough police officers in France to do all that. »
According to him, France has 6,000 to 7,000 intelligence agents (DGSI, DGSE, territorial intelligence), but the problem is not limited to the simple problem of manpower: “Even by quadrupling the manpower, we will still be confronted with the same problem of act of isolated individuals,” he specifies.
To face this threat which has become concrete, the State has increased its announcements. As of Friday, the implementation of the “emergency attack” was announced by Matignon. This is the first time that the highest level of the Vigipirate system has been activated since 2020 and the assassination of Samuel Paty.
“Attack emergency” and security around schools
Control of the surroundings of educational establishments by the police will be reinforced. A note from the central directorate of public security, of which AFP had a copy, asks agents to analyze “weak or strong signals”. After a meeting with the unions, the Minister of National Education Gabriel Attal announced the deployment of a thousand members of the ministry’s mobile security teams.
Following in the school’s footsteps, the entire security system is muscular. Emmanuel Macron has decided to mobilize up to “7,000 soldiers from the Sentinel force” throughout the territory. “These additional soldiers on the ground make it possible to free police officers from traditional surveillance tasks so that they can devote themselves more to the direct security of citizens,” judge Alain Rodier.
More than 40 attack plans foiled since 2017
For fear of an attack, the Louvre Museum and the Palace of Versailles had to evacuate their public on Saturday. Part of Lyon station also had to be temporarily closed to process abandoned luggage. “There was no real threat,” reassured Gérald Darmanin, while the police are particularly in demand at the moment, particularly due to the Rugby World Cup.
The Minister of the Interior, who on Saturday ruled out an error by the intelligence services after Arras, made the link between the news in the Middle East and the attack in Arras, evoking an “atmosphere of jihadism”, while the The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office announced on Friday the opening of an investigation, in particular for “assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise”. News that can “resonate” with “the weakest minds”, among the several hundred profiles similar in France to the main suspect in Arras, considers Alain Chouet.
“We will not give in to violence. We will face it and we will fight it,” said Élisabeth Borne on Saturday. Since 2017, 43 Islamist attack plans have been foiled in France, according to Gérald Darmanin.
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