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French Inquiry Urges Changes to Intelligence Services in Light of Failures French Inquiry Urges Changes to Intelligence Services in Light of Failures
(about 7 hours later)
PARIS — A parliamentary inquiry in France has urged the authorities to overhaul the intelligence services by creating a unified structure, after identifying multiple failures before the two devastating terrorist attacks that struck the country in 2015, lawmakers said on Tuesday. PARIS — A parliamentary committee examining two devastating terrorist attacks in France last year called on Tuesday for the nation’s intelligence agencies to be streamlined and merged, finding widespread failures in the collection and analysis of information that could have helped prevent the attacks.
At a news conference in Paris, the lawmakers who took part in the inquiry called on the French authorities to replace the overlapping and sometimes competing agencies. The committee that conducted the inquiry laid out 40 proposals to address the failures, including the merging of several French intelligence services and the creation of a shared antiterrorism database. Among 40 proposals, lawmakers urged the government to merge some of France’s overlapping and sometimes competing agencies and to create a new national agency — like the National Counterterrorism Center that the United States established after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — reporting directly to the prime minister. It also urged the government to set up a shared antiterrorism database; to better monitor prisons, where radicalization of inmates is a major problem; and to tighten the sentencing of convicted terrorists.
The inquiry was prompted largely by attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and elsewhere in the Paris area in January that left 17 people dead, and by a coordinated series of assaults in and around the city in November in which Islamic State militants killed 130 people. The National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament, set up the committee in January to examine attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and elsewhere in the Paris area in January 2015, and a coordinated series of assaults by the Islamic State in and around the capital in November. A total of 147 people were killed in those attacks.
“Today we don’t measure up to those who are attacking us,” said Georges Fenech, a center-right lawmaker who presided over the inquiry. The nonpartisan committee included lawmakers from France’s two largest parties, the Socialists and the center-right Republicans. It offered the most definitive account so far of the 2015 attacks, and of the intelligence failures preceding them, but was more limited in scope than the 9/11 commission. It did not have access to classified documents, although it held several closed-door meetings with intelligence and security officials. Judicial and criminal investigations into the attacks are continuing.
The lawmakers also called for better intelligence sharing between European countries, pointing to several instances in which perpetrators of the Nov. 13 attacks were able to escape because information was not adequately shared between countries. While the recommendations are not binding, they are likely to add to the pressures confronting President François Hollande, a Socialist, who is expected to pursue re-election next year despite abysmal popularity ratings. The committee did not directly criticize the government’s response to the attacks, though it raised questions about the efficiency of the state of emergency that Mr. Hollande declared in November, and of the deployment of 10,000 soldiers around the country to protect cities and other sensitive areas.
Many of the attackers were known to the French or Belgian authorities because they had criminal records or had previously been identified as showing signs of radicalization. Some had even been under surveillance. “Today we don’t measure up to those who are attacking us,” said Georges Fenech, a Republican lawmaker, who led the inquiry. “We are not questioning the professional qualities of these men, who are known in the rest of the intelligence world, in other countries, for their abilities,” but rather focusing on problems of structure and organization, he said.
Mr. Fenech also said that France needed to create a structure comparable to the National Counterterrorism Center in the United States, one of the countries the committee visited during its inquiry. For example, he said, the National Police, which protects large cities, and the Gendarmerie, a branch of the military that protects small towns and rural areas, have separate intelligence divisions, which Mr. Fenech said should be merged. France has three elite police units, each with different roles in different areas of the country.
The parliamentary fact-finding committee was set up in January by the National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament, to look into the government’s response to terrorist attacks in 2015 and to investigate possible security failures. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Tuesday that several of the committee’s findings were in line with the government’s own plans. Under the state of emergency, the government has taken steps to increase the powers of police and intelligence services.
In January of last year, two gunmen stormed the offices of the Charlie Hebdo in Paris, killing 12 people; a third gunman killed a police officer and, separately, four hostages at a kosher supermarket in the French capital in the days that followed. The Nov. 13 attacks were largely organized by a cell of Islamic State militants operating from Brussels. The team also carried out attacks in and around the Belgian capital on March 22 that left 32 people dead and hundreds of others injured.
In November, militants staged coordinated gun and suicide bombing attacks near the Stade de France soccer stadium in the St.-Denis suburb of Paris; at restaurants and at cafes in the 10th and 11th Arrondissements of the capital; and at the Bataclan concert hall, killing 130 and wounding more than 400. Many of the attackers in that cell were known to the French or Belgian authorities; some had even been under surveillance.
Salah Abdeslam, thought to be the only direct participant in the November attacks to have survived, was arrested in Belgium in March and extradited to France in April, but he has so far refused to answer the questions of French investigative judges. He is suspected of playing an important role in the logistical planning of the plot, but his role on the night of the attacks is less clear. “Clearly, Europe is not up to the task in the fight against terrorism, even if progress has been made in the past months,” said Sébastien Pietrasanta, the top Socialist lawmaker on the committee.
Mr. Abdeslam, a French citizen of Moroccan ancestry who lived in Belgium, eluded capture for four months after the attacks, thanks in part to a network of friends and acquaintances that helped him return to Brussels and hide from the authorities. One of those acquaintances, Hamza Attou, was extradited to France in June. Mr. Attou and another man picked up Mr. Abdeslam in Paris on the night of the attacks and drove him back to Belgium. For example, the Greek authorities tracked down Abdelhamid Abaaoud — the on-the-ground coordinator of the November attacks — in Athens in January 2015 and notified Belgium, where Mr. Abaaoud was wanted. But when the Belgian authorities foiled a terrorist plot in the town of Verviers, raiding a hide-out used by Mr. Abaaoud’s accomplices, they failed to alert their Greek counterparts in time. As a result, Mr. Abaaoud, who had been tipped off about the Belgian operation, got away, Mr. Pietrasanta said.
Several other men suspected of being involved in the logistics of the attacks or of helping Mr. Abdeslam escape are set to be extradited to France, including Mohamed Abrini, a childhood friend of Mr. Abdeslam’s who was also the third bomber in the airport attack in Brussels on March 22. Members of the committee traveled to Belgium, Greece, Turkey and the United States, among other countries.
The 30-member committee, which mainly included lawmakers from the mainstream center-right and Socialist parties, interviewed hundreds of people, including ministers, families of victims of the attacks, police officers, intelligence officials and emergency medical workers. Members of the committee also traveled to Belgium, Greece and Turkey to discuss intelligence-sharing. “During our trip to the United States, we did not meet a single American official who did not truly urge us to create and strengthen a real intelligence operation at the European level,” Mr. Fenech said.
The committee is expected to publish a full report on July 12. The committee urged European Union member states to give Europol, the bloc’s law enforcement agency, and Frontex, the bloc’s border-control agency, full access to the Schengen Information System, a database of missing or wanted people.
France is still under the state of emergency that President François Hollande declared after the November attacks, and it has already enacted measures that increase the powers of police and intelligence services. Salah Abdeslam, thought to be the only direct participant in the November attacks to have survived, was arrested in Belgium in March and extradited to France in April, but has so far refused to answer questions. He is suspected of playing an important role in the logistical planning of the plot, but his role on the night of the attacks is less clear.
The authorities have also tightened security at two major sport events this summer: the Tour de France, which started on Saturday, and the European Championship soccer tournament, which ends on Sunday. Mr. Abdeslam, a French citizen of Moroccan ancestry who lived in Belgium, eluded capture for four months after the attacks, thanks in part to a network of friends and acquaintances who helped him return to Brussels and hide there. One of those acquaintances, Hamza Attou, was extradited to France in June.
France’s intelligence services say that the country is still at risk of Islamic State attacks. In June, a man who had declared allegiance to the group stabbed and killed a police officer and his companion in a small town 35 miles northwest of Paris. Mr. Attou and another man picked up Mr. Abdeslam in Paris on the night of the attacks and drove him back to Belgium. The French police stopped the car near the Belgian border the next morning, but waved it through.
Mr. Fenech said that failure was “indisputably” a result of dysfunction in cooperation: Mr. Abdeslam was known to the Belgian authorities as a radicalized militant, but was not flagged as such in a database shared with the French police.
Several other men suspected of being involved in the logistics of the attacks or of helping Mr. Abdeslam escape are set to be extradited to France, including Mohamed Abrini, a friend of Mr. Abdeslam’s who bombed the Brussels Airport on March 22.
The committee, which interviewed hundreds of people, is expected to publish a full report next Tuesday, which will include a detailed timeline of the two sets of attacks and an analysis of the actions of intelligence agencies, the police and other emergency responders, criminal courts, and the military.
The committee proposed training all emergency workers and medical teams to treat injuries like those sustained by troops in combat.
It also addressed the problem of radicalization of inmates in prison. Amedy Coulibaly, who took hostages at a kosher supermarket in Paris in January 2015 and was killed by the police, had been identified as a radicalized militant, but prison officials did not pass on that information to French intelligence services, Mr. Pietrasanta said.
The country remains on high alert. The authorities have tightened security at two major competitions this summer: the Tour de France, which started on Saturday, and the European Championship soccer tournament, which ends on Sunday. One of the committee’s proposals is for greater investment in surveillance cameras and in machines that can automatically read license plates.
Victims’ groups have urged the government to act quickly on reforms.
“We are waiting to see what the lawmakers will now propose, and what the government will do with it,” Aurélie Gilbert, the vice president of an association of victims and victims’ families created after the Nov. 13 attacks, told Agence France-Presse.