A terrorist attack was foiled earlier this week in northern France, involving a 19-year-old man who claimed to be acting on behalf of Daesh—the Islamic State. No fewer than six attacks have been foiled in recent months. For the minister of the interior, the real danger today is no longer an external attack but the actions of a fringe of radicalised French youth.
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| Image Credit: Tahreer Photography / Getty |
Morad M. was arrested by the police in a social centre in Dunkirk on the morning of Wednesday, April 2nd, following a tip-off. The young man, a French citizen and unemployed, was known for drug trafficking. Investigators found a letter of allegiance to Daesh at his home. He admitted wanting to commit an attack with an explosive belt in the city of Dunkirk, targeting café terraces and places frequented by the Jewish community, to do “like the Bataclan.” He said he was motivated by “the state of France.” The managers of the centre where he had been living for three years had been alerted by his gradual radicalisation. Two other men he knew were arrested with him; one of them was imprisoned for “criminal association with terrorists.”
Speaking to the media following this case, Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau expressed his concern about the scale of the terrorist threat that France is facing today. 80% of investigations conducted by the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office concern jihadist attacks. The threat is twofold:
There is always the exogenous threat, which comes from outside, particularly from the Islamic State. The threat that is the most real, the most pressing, is the internal threat with more and more young people.
The extreme youth of these would-be terrorists is a cause for concern in high places. In 70% of the foiled cases, the alleged perpetrators were under the age of 21. The age of those involved is a glaring demonstration of the inability of the national education system to prevent the radicalisation of teenagers. These young people, often without a future and from broken families, become radicalised online, based on content generated by artificial intelligence by agents of the Islamic State. A month ago, a 17-year-old minor was arrested and imprisoned for a similar projectin the Vesoul region in eastern France. He allegedly planned to use a knife to attack a church, a synagogue, or an American or Israeli embassy or consulate. He also claimed to be a member of Daesh.
Since the attacks in Toulouse in 2012, 86 attacks have been foiled by the French intelligence services.