Terrorism in FranceMacron creates counterterrorism task force

French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday announced the creation of a counterterrorism task force to tackle radicalization and terrorism in France.

The task force will initially have twenty full-time specialists working in shifts, 24/7.

“This [the task force] has been created to ensure that the intelligence services truly cooperate,” a spokesperson for the of the president said. of the 20-member 24/7 agency.

The spokesman added that the new agency will be animated by this: “Un seul mot d’ordre en filigrane: plus aucun angle mort ne sera toléré” (A single slogan in watermark: no blind spot will be tolerated).

Le Figaro reports that Macron appointed Pierre de Bousquet de Florian to head the new Centre national du contre-terrorisme (CNCT). Bousquet de Florian is a former chief of France’s Direction de la Surveillance du territoire (DST) – the country’s domestic intelligence service.

In July 2008, President Nicolas Sarkozy merged DST with another agency (Direction centrale des Renseignements généraux) to create a new agency — Direction centrale du Renseignement intérieur (DCRI). The agency’s name was changed in 2014 to Direction générale de la Sécurité intérieure (DGSI) (General Directorate for Internal Security).

Macron also named Bernard Emie, a career diplomat who served as France’s ambassador to Britain, Turkey, Libya, and Jordan, as the new head of the DGSE (Direction générale de la Sécurité extérieure) – France’s foreign intelligence service.

Le Figaronotes that France’s intelligence and law enforcement services have been criticized over the past eighteen months for their inability to stop large-scale terrorist attacks which have killed about 230 people since November 2015.

The new task force will report directly to the president.

On Tuesday, a man – later identified as a 40-year old Algerian student — armed with a hammer and kitchen knives, and shouting “this is for Syria,” attacked several people outside Notre-Dame Cathedral in central Paris. He managed to injure one policeman before being shot by police officers on the scene. The assailant is now being treated in a Paris hospital.

In a search of the man’s home, officers had found a video in which he pledged allegiance to IS.

Government spokesperson Christophe Castaner told the broadcaster RTL on Wednesday that the assailant had not previously “shown any signs of radicalization.” He called the attack an “isolated act.”