France Deploys Troops to Guard ‘Sensitive Sites’

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/world/europe/france-charlie-hebdo-terrorist-attacks.html

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PARIS — Confronting a country in shock from last week’s terrorist attacks, the French government acted on Monday to increase security, sending thousands of soldiers and police officers to guard sites considered vulnerable, including Jewish schools, and calling for measures to reinforce electronic surveillance and curb jihadist recruitment in prisons and other crucibles of radicalization.

The display of muscle by the government — which will most likely face mounting questions about its failure to prevent the killings — recalled the mood in the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks, when Washington took an array of steps to guard against further attacks and authorize more intrusive surveillance.

The French response played into an emerging debate across Europe that pits support for civil liberties against the demands of security officials, who cite the attacks as evidence of an urgent need to introduce stronger powers to monitor suspects. Only a few weeks ago, people here were sharply criticizing the United States for its surveillance practices and the revelations in a searing Senate report on the torture of terrorism suspects after 9/11.

Seeking to reassure jittery citizens, the French defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said Monday that 10,000 soldiers would be deployed by Tuesday evening to “sensitive sites” in what he called “the first mobilization on this scale on our territory.” Defense Ministry officials said that the troops would probably be deployed at tourist sites, major buildings and transport hubs such as airports and railroad stations, and that they could also conduct street patrols.

The deployment reflected the country’s readiness to resist Islamic militants both within and beyond its borders. French aircraft have joined the American-led campaign in Iraq, and about 3,000 French soldiers have been deployed in Africa to counter extremist groups in countries like Chad and Mauritania.

The interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said on Monday that 4,700 police officers would be posted to guard the country’s 700 Jewish schools and other institutions after three days of bloodshed last week, when three assailants killed 17 people in attacks on targets that included a satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, and a kosher supermarket.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls spoke of new legislation to enhance surveillance powers “in three or four months” as part of what he called “an exceptional response” to the attacks. He said there had been a large increase in the number of French people traveling to Syria and Iraq to join jihadist movements — a source of deep concern, along with the Internet’s power to spread radical messages.

One of the attackers last week, Amedy Coulibaly, said in a video posted on the Internet after his death that he had acted in the name of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. His video seemed to try to emulate the images established by the Islamic State in its videos of beheadings.

France has generally expressed an aversion to what are often depicted as draconian American measures to protect national security, including the USA Patriot Act passed in the aftermath of 9/11.

But last week’s attacks have forced France to contemplate its commitment to personal liberty, which has been challenged as terrorism becomes increasingly defined as a homegrown threat by radicalized members of one of Europe’s largest Muslim communities, many of whom are French citizens.

“The very idea of a war on terrorism is worrisome,” the journalists Jacques Follorou and Franck Johannès wrote in Le Monde on Monday. “For the law, there is nothing worse than these moments of intense unanimity, this wave of emotion that submerges rationality.”

A first test of the political response to the attacks could come Tuesday when the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament, is to vote on a renewal of the mandate for the airstrikes on Iraq. In the past, lawmakers have observed a longstanding tradition of avoiding dissent over such matters. In light of last week’s attacks, many analysts expect the legislature to extend the mandate.

On Sunday, over a million people marched in central Paris to denounce terrorism, displaying defiance and unity across faiths, races and politics. President François Hollande and 40 other world leaders joined the march.

But the attacks have also bolstered the increasingly powerful far right in France led by the National Front of Marine Le Pen, which has drawn strength from its opposition to radical Islam.

The three attackers were killed in two police raids, but there is concern here that “the threat is still present,” as Mr. Le Drian put it. The prime minister, Mr. Valls, speaking to BFM television, said that one of the attackers, Mr. Coulibaly, “undoubtedly” had one or more accomplices who were still at large.

The Paris attackers, including the brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, were praised on Monday by an influential militant in Algeria, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who urged other Muslims to carry out similar assaults, according to SITE, an online monitoring service. Mr. Belmokhtar said the attacks were justified by Western aggression, including French military action against Islamists in North Africa.

Mr. Coulibaly is said by the police to have killed four of the hostages in the supermarket on Friday — Jewish shoppers preparing for the Sabbath — and is also suspected of having shot a police officer on Thursday.

Parts of Mr. Coulibaly’s video appeared to have been produced by an accomplice after his death, because it alluded to information that emerged only after he died when the police stormed the market. Concerns centered on the possible role of his girlfriend, Hayat Boumeddiene, and whether she had made contact with ISIS forces in Syria.

Turkey’s state news agency on Monday quoted the country’s foreign minister as saying that Ms. Boumeddiene entered Syria from Turkey on Thursday, the day before the attack on the kosher market.

Mevlut Cavusoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, told the state-run Anadolu Agency that Ms. Boumeddiene arrived in Turkey from Madrid on Jan. 2 and stayed at a hotel in Istanbul.

Surrounded by bodyguards, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel arrived at the market on Monday in a gesture of solidarity with French Jews. Many people waving Israeli flags gathered to cheer him, and some said they would seek to immigrate to Israel because they no longer felt safe in France.

The Central Council of Muslims in France said Monday that there had been more than 50 anti-Muslim episodes since the attacks, including 21 shootings that targeted Islamic buildings.

France and Britain, both of which already have intelligence programs to track threats from radicalized Muslims and fighters returning from Syria, have signaled in recent days that they will try to expand those programs, especially the monitoring of communications.

British intelligence and security chiefs briefed Prime Minister David Cameron on the implications of the Paris attacks for the authorities in London, which was the site of coordinated attacks on July 7, 2005, that led to 52 deaths.

At the Vatican, Pope Francis condemned the extremism behind the attacks, saying that religious fundamentalism “eliminates God himself, turning him into a mere ideological pretext.”

In his annual speech to diplomats accredited to the Holy See, the pope spoke of a “culture of rejection, which severs the deepest and most authentic human bonds, leading to the breakdown of society and spawning violence and death.”

“Losing their freedom, people become enslaved, whether to the latest fads or to power, money or even deviant forms of religion,” he added. “Violence is always the product of a falsification of religion, its use as a pretext for ideological schemes whose only goal is power over others.”