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RADICALISATION

France to open first centre for deradicalization amid anger

France’s first deradicalization centre aimed at freeing those who have been convinced by the ideology of extremist Islam is due to open before the summer - but not if the angry locals can prevent it.

Published: 11 March 2016 15:45 CET
Updated: 12 March 2016 09:23 CET
France to open first centre for deradicalization amid anger
The centre which will become France's first centre for deradicalizing extremists. Photo: ITele

The announcement about the new centre was made this week but the location of the centre had been kept secret. However, it wasn’t long before it was leaked.

The centre, which will aim to convince people to turn their backs on extremism, will be located at Beaumont-en-Véron in the Indre et Loire département of central France.

It will be a kind of boarding school for radicalized French youths aged 18 to 30, who may have tried and failed to travel to the Middle East. It will officially be called a centre for “reintegration and citizenship”.

The establishment will be able to accommodate 30 people for a ten-month stay, with possibilities of undertaking an internship in nearby companies. Participants will sign up on a voluntary basis and will have to wear a uniform during their stay.

They will be not be kept as prisoners and can return to their families at weekends. But the fact they will be able to wander around the area freely has concerned local residents and officials.

Hundreds of radicalized individuals have left France to fight jihad in the Middle East, with authorities increasingly concerned about those who have returned home.

Local mayor Bernard Château said he reacted “with amazement” to finding out the centre would be located in a former education centre building on his turf.

The mayor of nearby Chinon was more outspoken.

“My first reaction was anger,” said Jean-Luc Dupont. “We have just learned that a centre will open here, but we were never at any moment consulted about this.

“We wanted this building used for young refugees and migrants in need of vocational training, not as a deradicalization centre.

“Imagine having to tell local people that radicalized individuals are going to be living next to them and to tell them ‘it doesn’t matter’,” said Dupont.

“Talking of radicalized people is scary,” he added.

One of those concerned residents, who asked not to be named, told Europe1 radio how they feared being the victim of a Paris-like terror attack.

“Of course the idea is scaring people. Everyone is afraid and asking lots of questions,” she said.

“Shouldn’t the army be handling these kind of questions,” she said.

“Yesterday it was Paris, tomorrow perhaps it could be us. Obviously we are scared,” she said.

Some observers have pointed out it is not far from the nuclear power plant at Chinon, where security has been ramped up like at other power stations and sensitive locations in France.

The local government chief from Indre et Loire was due to hold a meeting with local officials on Friday to try to allay their fears.

 

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POLICE

Paris police attacker adhered to ‘radical strain of Islam’

A staffer at Paris police headquarters who stabbed four colleagues to death in a frenzied attack adhered to "a radical vision of Islam", an anti-terror prosecutor said Saturday, amid a gathering political storm over security safeguards.

Published: 6 October 2019 09:38 CEST
Paris police attacker adhered to 'radical strain of Islam'
Photo: MARTIN BUREAU / AFP

The 45-year-old computer expert had been in contact with members of Salafism, an ultra-conservative branch of Sunni Islam, and defended “atrocities committed in the name of that religion”, Jean-Francois Ricard told reporters. 

Three police officers and an administrative worker — three men and one woman — died in the lunchtime attack on Thursday at the police headquarters, a stone's throw from the Notre-Dame cathedral in the historic heart of Paris.

READ: Paris stabbings investigated as possible terrorist attack

The assailant, named as Mickael Harpon, was shot dead by a policeman, who was a trainee at the police headquarters.

The attack sent shock waves through an embattled French police force already complaining of low morale and has raised serious concerns over security procedures.

Harpon, born on the French overseas territory of Martinique in the Caribbean, converted to Islam about 10 years ago, the prosecutor said.

He had no police record but was investigated for domestic violence in 2009.

Sources said he had worked in a section of the police service dedicated to collecting information on jihadist radicalisation.

Harpon held a high-level “defence secrets” security clearance, which authorised him to handle sensitive information of national defence importance and would have subjected him to regular, stringent security checks.

'No nervousness'

On the morning of his “extremely violent” attack, Harpon bought two knives — a 33-centimetre long kitchen knife and an oyster knife — which he kept hidden, Ricard said.

He showed “absolutely no signs of nervousness” as he circled back to police headquarters, according to CCTV footage examined by police, the prosecutor said.

The attack, from his return to the office, the killings and his death by police bullets, lasted seven minutes, Ricard said.

He first killed a 50-year old police major and a 38-year old guard who worked in the same office as Harpon and were having lunch at their desks.

He then went to another office on the same floor where he killed a 37-year old administrative worker.

Having failed to enter another office, which was locked, he went down into the courtyard where he stabbed a 39-year old policewoman who later died of her wounds.

He then injured two other people, before the trainee policeman killed him with two shots.

Shortly before the attack he had exchanged 33 text messages with his wife.

The messages exclusively concerned religion, and the attacker ended the conversation with “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest”) and told her to “follow our beloved prophet Mohammed and meditate on the Koran”, according to the prosecutor.

She was being held by police on Saturday. Harpon, who supported the Charlie Hebdo attacks in 2015, had changed his attire in recent months, shunning “all Western clothes in favour of traditional garments to visit the mosque”, Ricard added.

He also wished to no longer “have certain kinds of contact with women”.

'Storm coming'

French President Emmanuel Macron, who has described the attack as a “veritable tragedy”, will lead tributes to the victims on Tuesday, the Elysee announced on Saturday.

Sources at the Paris prosecutor's office said on Friday the case had been passed to the anti-terrorist prosecutor's office (PNAT).

After Saturday's news conference by the anti-terror prosecutor, Interior Minister Christophe Castaner came under pressure from political opponents who demanded his resignation.

They also called for an inquiry into how Harpon could have failed to attract the attention of security services in the run up to the attack.

“It's going to be hard to explain how he kept below the radar” of anti-terror units, said one police source.

“There's a storm coming,” the source said.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe meanwhile expressed his “full confidence” in Castaner. But in an interview with weekly JDD to be published Sunday, he also said that procedures for the detection of signs that anti-terror agents may themselves have been radicalised would be probed.

Paris's top policeman Didier Lallement said there was no reason to question security arrangements in police headquarters.

French police have been a recurring target of jihadist groups, such as Islamic State, behind a wave of attacks since 2015 — from large synchronised assaults to isolated knife and gun attacks.

In June, a parliamentary report on radicalisation within the public services spoke of 30 suspected cases out of the 150,000 police officers and 130,000 gendarmes in France.

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