The
tabloid coverage from the likes of the Guardian aside, here is a
semi-official view
"Blowback!
That was REALLY clever supporting the Syrian Islamist revolution…Any
terrorists they choose - assuming that said Islamists would never
bite the hand that fed them - Hollande obviously missed the lesson of
the American support for the Taliban"
---Eric Kraus (who live in Moscow)
Why, it needs to be asked, (as the Saker does), if the French authorities had prior warning did they have only one policeman on duty outside? This does not make an anti-terror operation, even in France
Why, it needs to be asked, (as the Saker does), if the French authorities had prior warning did they have only one policeman on duty outside? This does not make an anti-terror operation, even in France
Charlie
Hebdo: Killings follow official warnings of attacks
FT,
7
January, 2015
French
authorities have been dreading — and warning of — a big terrorist
attack on home soil for months, their concerns fuelled by large
numbers of French recruits to Islamist groups fighting in the Middle
East and previous murderous incidents.
The
perpetrators of the attack on Wednesday on the offices
of Charlie Hebdo,
the relentlessly irreverent satirical cartoon weekly, have yet to be
identified. But President François Hollande, visiting the scene in
central Paris where 12 people were shot dead, immediately declared it
a terrorist attack. “There is no doubt,” he said.
Immediate
suspicion inevitably fell on Islamist militants. Charlie Hebdo has
repeatedly mocked Islam, along with other religions, with ribald
caricatures. Its offices, under police guard for years, have been
firebombed in the past after the magazine spoofed Islamic sharia law.
The
authorities have warned for some time of the risk of “blowback”
from these militants when they return to France, which has become an
increasingly proactive member of the international coalition fighting
the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, better known as Isis, in
Syria and Iraq. Late last year, official estimates put at about 1,000
the number of French citizens or residents who had been or were
currently involved in Islamist groups in Syria and Iraq.
Official
tallies then said some 200 had returned home, of whom more than 50
had been jailed. Some of the returnees may be disillusioned with the
jihadi cause. But the fear concerns those who may have slipped under
the radar, motivated to bring the fight back home.
Numerous
plots in France have been thwarted by the French security services.
The domestic intelligence agency, the DGSI, Direction Générale de
la Sécurité Intérieure, stopped five major terror plots in the 18
months to December, according to the French ministry of the interior.
The
nature of the attack is likely to raise concern for European security
chiefs. The fact that more than one attacker was involved, and that
the atrocity was conducted with automatic weapons, implies a greater
degree of planning and co-ordination than would have been the case
for a lone assailant, according to one European security official.
Early reports that the terrorists also sought out individuals by name
at the magazine also imply that detailed preparations were made.
Questions
are likely to be asked about how such a plot was missed. In
particular, security officials will be anxious to know whether there
are other members of a cell who helped plan the attack, or if there
are further targets for the Charlie Hebdo assailants, all of whom are
still at large.
The
government has in the past year introduced tougher antiterrorist
legislation in response to the Islamist threat, allowing for the
confiscation of passports of suspected aspirant jihadis, stronger
powers of arrest and new provisions against internet support for
terrorism.
The
clearest example of the threat came last May when Mehdi Nemmouche, a
29-year-old French citizen, was arrested in Marseille and charged
with an attack on the Jewish museum in Brussels a few days earlier in
which two Israelis and a French national were killed. He had spent a
year in Syria.
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