French judge: Militants returning with attacks in mind
Battle-hardened French Islamic militants who have fought in Iraq are returning home with the ability and desire to carry out attacks in Europe, posing a “very worrying” new terrorism risk, a senior French anti-terror judge said today.
Investigating judge Jean-Francois Ricard said that aside from militants who have travelled to Iraq to carry out suicide attacks or fight Iraqi and US-led forces, others went there to be trained.
“The return of some individuals is starting: They’re taking round trips. You can’t think that once in Iraq, there’s no return,” he said. “It is not true.”
“I have confirmation … of this return with action targeting our countries, we’ve been starting to see it this year, or in 2004,” Ricard added. “It’s very worrying.”
He declined to elaborate on how many French citizens may be involved.
When asked whether their return meant increased surveillance measures, Ricard said: “We have to keep an eye out, as always, with anyone who could be in contact with them.”
Islamic militants from France have long participated in armed struggles and received battle training around the globe, in places such as Chechnya, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, Ricard said, but only rarely have such militants sought to bring the violence back with them.
The face of militancy in France and the world is changing with the Iraq war, Ricard said. As with some of the suspects in the London bombings, some French Islamic extremists are unknown to authorities.
“What’s new – and we’ve seen it more with the emergence of the Iraqi networks in France – is that these are very young people, and totally unknown,” he said.
Seven French nationals have been killed in Iraq and three others are being held by police there, Christophe Chaboud, head of the anti-terrorism unit of the national police, said in an interview published this week.
French counter-terrorism officials have uncovered and dismantled four suspected feeder networks of French nationals for the insurgency in Iraq this year.
Police on Monday apprehended six suspects in suburban Paris as part of an investigation opened by counter-terrorism judges last September.
France, which got an early jump in the counterterrorism fight following attacks in the mid-1980s and mid-1990s carried out by Lebanese and Algerian extremists, has tough counter-terrorism rules – and is looking to tighten them even further.
An anti-terrorism bill to go before the French cabinet next month would double the maximum penalty in the most common charge applied in terrorism cases to 20 years' imprisonment.
It would also give authorities more power to monitor citizens who travel to countries believed to be home to terror groups, and to step up video surveillance around France.
France decided to boost its surveillance measures after seeing Britain’s successful use of video cameras in capturing suspects in the attempted bombings in London on July 21.
In the interview, Ricard rejected media reports referring to “spontaneous generation” of Islamic militants allegedly driven to violence just from reading inflammatory internet sites.
“This isn’t what I’ve seen in the press, an individual in his little world, living with mom and dad and a calm life, who alone has a revelation through the Internet that he’ll become a terrorist,” Ricard said. “I’ve never seen that. There’s always a contact with someone.”
Still, “the work (of authorities) is more and more difficult, and it has to be much more systematic”, he said, saying that terror groups are becoming increasingly discreet.
Ricard praised international cooperation among counterterrorism officials in the sharing and gathering of intelligence, but criticised poor co-ordination on the judicial front. National rules on questioning of suspects led to red tape, and unnecessary – often counterproductive – overlaps.
As an example, he recalled how investigators from a European country had questioned a man in a thwarted plot to blow up the Christmas market in the eastern French city of Strasbourg on New Year’s Eve 2000 – after French authorities had already done so.
The second round of interrogation – which included many of the same questions that French investigators asked – spooked the witness and caused him to keep quiet for the next year.
“If a person gives interesting testimony and has to provide it again to four other countries to meet national laws … we’re headed for a blockage.”
He said French judges used testimony collected in questioning by US officials in the case of would-be millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam, who was convicted in the US in July for a failed millennium plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport.
There is less co-ordination within Europe, he said.
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