TerrorismDomestic terrorism in France more likely in wake of Mali intervention

Marc Trévidic, France’s most prominent investigative judge dealing with terrorism, warned in an interview that the on-going French military intervention in Mali has intensified the threat of terrorist attacks inside France by French citizens of African ancestry.

He noted that initially the French security services were mostly concerned with jihadi elements among French citizens of North African Arab ancestry, that is, citizens hailing from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Now, however, more attention is being paid to potential terrorist threats coming from those French citizens whose ancestry is Mali, Senegal, Nigeria, and Niger.

“After Merah [Mohamed Merah, 23, who killed seven people last March in Toulouse]… the French are afraid of terrorism,” Trévidic said. “They are afraid that you can have one or two or three Mohamed Merahs. And they could be right; no one really knows.”

The New York Times reports that Trévidic has been dealing with terrorism cases since 2000, before the 9/11 attacks, and is regarded is the best known of the eight investigating magistrates assigned to a special antiterrorism court in Paris. When he started, he said, terrorism was simpler — “there were no women, no children and few groups.”

Now, “the field of suspects is much larger, so the situation gives me a little fear,” he said. “We’re fighting groups that are less powerful and organized than before, but which are much more difficult to detect.”

He said that the Mali intervention has raised the stakes both at home and abroad — where French tourists and workers are now more vulnerable to kidnapping.

Trévidic revealed that during the month leading to the mid-January French intervention against Islamists in north Mali, the French intelligence services began to notice a growing movement of French citizens to Mali. The very talk of France helping the Mali government evict the Islamists from north Mali caused more than a few French Muslim citizens to move there – both to live under the  Sharia law imposed by the Islamists and, if need be, help the Islamists resist the French military in the name of defending “real Islam.”

“Now the main problem is to try to stop the departures [from Mali], because if we can’t, the threat will be higher and higher.”

“Because they will be trained and come back and organize themselves,” he added.

Trévidic emphasized that right now the threat is not very large because these French Islamists are few in numbers and not organized. “But we have a lot of citizens in France who are also Malians, Senegalese, Nigerians and Nigeriens, and they have passports and can also go there, and the frontiers are very long and fluid, so it will be very difficult.”

The Times notes that an investigating magistrate in France holds great power, directing police investigations, and gathering evidence both for and against the accused. The work is more delicate when the issue is terrorism.

Trévidic said that since the Merah case, the French Intelligence services and law enforcement are more reluctant to engage in long surveillance of suspects. Merah himself was under surveillance, with the French intelligence service – DCRI – hoping he would lead them to other Islamists in his network. While he was under surveillance, he killed three French soldiers and four Jewish elementary school children before committing suicide.

Trévidic says that since the Merah incident, law enforcement would rather detain suspects, thus keeping them from committing crime, but also hobbling intelligence gathering efforts.

He said that the suspects he comes across are also younger and angrier. “The young Muslims I see in my office have developed a kind of paranoia,” he said. “They are sure that we want to fight Islam, that we’re against Islam. They were born in France and were not practicing Muslims, but now they pray and they are sure we are against Muslims.”

He said that young second- and third-generation Muslims in France are not well integrated into French society, live in largely segregated, poor suburbs, and feel at home nowhere. “So some find their pride in religion now, in extremism,” Trévidic said.

For now, “the danger is not so big, perhaps, but the threat is big,” he said. “This is the way terrorists win — they can win with very little.”