RUTHFULLY YOURS

According to a confidential memo, dated January 2015, from the anti-terrorist unit of the interior ministry, France was already host to 8,250 radical Islamists (a 50% increase in one year).

Some of these Islamists have gone to Syria to join the Islamic State (IS); others have infiltrated all levels of society, starting with the police and the armed forces.

A confidential memo from the Department of Public Security, published by Le Parisien, not only details 17 cases of police officers radicalized between 2012 and 2015, but that this increase had accelerated during 2014. Particularly noted were the police officers who listen to and broadcast Muslim chants while on patrol.

Some of these police officers have openly refused to to protect synagogues or to observe a minute of silence to commemorate the deaths of victims of terrorist attacks.

In addition, the police were alerted to a policewoman who incited terrorism on Facebook, and called her police uniform a “filthy rag of the Republic” while wiping her hands on it. When she came out of the restroom she was wearing a hijab. In January 2015, immediately after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Hypercacher market in Vincennes which had left 17 people dead, she wrote on her Facebook page: “Masked attack led by Zionist cowards… They need to be killed.”

That police officers are armed and have access to police databases only intensifies anxiety.

Although Police headquarters in Paris confirm that this situation is rare, they have decided to review on a weekly basis any behavior that overstep the principle of separation of church and state, such as that of Muslim officers who appear to be leaning toward radicalization. Patrice Latron, who manages the office of the Paris police prefect, told Le Parisien that these circumstances are “very marginal.”

The police are not the only ones anxious. The French army is concerned as well. There are no statistics for the number of Muslim soldiers in the French army, but it is commonly felt that there are many, and that they are sensitive to Islamist influence, given that France in engaged militarily in Africa, against Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQMI) and against the Islamic State in the Middle East. Since the Charlie Hebdo attack in January 2015, however, France’s largest military operation has been on national soil: 10,000 armed forces are now deployed in France to protect synagogues, Jewish schools, train and subway stations — as well as some mosques to show Muslims that the French Republic does not see them as enemies. Their mission is no longer to be simply a complementary force but, as Le Figaro explained, to “deploy, on a permanent basis, interior military operations.”

As early as 2013, during the fifth national security parliamentary conference, Colonel Pascal Rolez, adjunct to the assistant director of the counter-intervention unit of the Defence Security Protection Department (DPSD), declared, “We are witnessing an increase in radicalization among the French military, notably since the Merah affair.” Recall that Mohammed Merah, a young French Muslim, was assassinated in cold blood, in a school, along with several French Jews.

In order to identify members of the armed forces who are being radicalized, the DPSD takes into account changes in dress, recurrent sick leave, travel, or theft of supplies or material.

Since the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the kosher market in Vincennes, in January 2015, the media have noted several indications of radicalization in the French army.

On January 21, 2015, the radio station RFI announced that about 10 French military veterans deserted, joining the Jihadist fight in Syria and Iraq. Jean-Yves Le Drian, Defense Minister, has confirmed this although with the caveat that these are “extremely rare” cases. Apparently, one of these veterans holds the position of “emir” in Deir Ezzor and leads a group of around 10 French combatants whom he has personally trained. Others are explosives experts or parachutists; some come from commando units in the French Foreign Legion.

Also in January 2015, soon after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the market in Vincennes, police discovered that Emmanuelle C, 35, from Brittany, converted to Islam in 2011, and was an adjunct in the gendarmerie, which is responsible to the defence department, had a relationship with Amar Ramdani, a confederate of Amedy Coulibaly, the Montrouge and Hypercacher market killer. Ramdani, who was wanted for weapons and drug trafficking, had been observed by the police department’s intelligence division (DRPP) in the “public” area of the fort in Rosny-Sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis). This fort houses the gendarmerie’s scientific branch. As for Emmanuelle C, she was accused of having committed more than 60 security breaches of the suspect persons’ file (FPR). She was sentenced to one year of probation and expelled from the gendarmerie.

In July 2015, the press revealed that approximately 180 bombs and 10 plastic explosive bricks had been stolen from an army depot near Marseille. The investigators naturally suspected internal complicity as the perpetrators had seemed to be well informed. They are following two possibilities, Islamic terrorism or grand theft; the investigation continues.

On July 16, 2015, President Hollande revealed an attack on a French military base. Three days earlier, on July 13, four men, one of whom was a Navy veteran, were arrested. They confessed that they had planned to infiltrate a Navy base in the south of France, seize a high-ranking officer, decapitate him and spread photos of the decapitation on social media. The Navy veteran was one of the commando leaders.

On March 9, 2016, the local newspaper, Presse Ocean, revealed that a radicalized military veteran, Manuel Broustail, was arrested while getting off a plane in Morocco. In his suitcases, he was carrying four kitchen knives, one machete, two pocket knives, a retractable club, a black hood, and a gas canister. A military veteran and convert to Islam, he had been placed under house arrest in November 2015, in Angers (Maine-et-Loire), after the horrific attacks in Paris in November 2014, during which 130 people were killed. Discharged from the army in 2014, he was under surveillance by the security forces. The media may well be concerned that someone with such an arsenal and without worrying, could breach airport security controls.

For Thibaut de Montbrial, terrorism specialist and president of the Center for Internal Security Studies, the risk “is having representatives of security forces attack their colleagues. Someone in uniform attacks another person, wearing the same uniform. In France, such a scenario is not impossible. Security forces must keep this risk in mind.”

Yves Mamou, based in France, is a journalist for Le Monde.