France struggles to monitor long list of radicals

The deadly Islamist attacks in Paris have left France’s security forces grappling with the impossible task of monitoring hundreds — if not thousands — of suspected radicals released from prison or returning from fighting abroad.

This week’s massacre and hostage crises revealed intelligence gaps, with all three gunmen previously known to security forces who were nevertheless unable to prevent the violence that has shaken the country.

One of them had even managed to meet then president Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysee palace in 2009 as part of an employment initiative.

There are no easy answers for how to address the problem, with the list of suspected radicals growing longer and security forces lacking the resources to carefully monitor all of them.

The number of French extremists travelling to Iraq and Syria to fight alongside Islamists there has worsened the situation since they could return home battle-hardened and further radicalized.

It has been estimated that almost 1,000 French nationals have left to join jihadists in Iraq and Syria.

“Overwhelmed? Yes indeed, we are,” a French anti-terrorist official told AFP on Saturday on condition of anonymity.

“How can it be done? We are going to work 20 hours a day instead of 15, but that won’t be enough. So we prioritize at the risk of making an error.”

He pointed out that it was impossible to assign a police officer to each suspect, and that monitoring would have to rely heavily on phone and Internet surveillance.

France’s intelligence agencies list suspects by order of the supposed danger they represent, with the most serious given round-the-clock surveillance, while the least dangerous are targeted with measures such as a few days of wiretapping. The trouble lies in managing the list.

“If France agrees to have 40,000 people for the intelligence services, we will do it. Otherwise, it is going to be difficult,” the official said.

The country’s domestic intelligence agency, the DGSI, includes less than 4,000 agents; the external agency, the DGSE, has around 5,000.

Not enough resources

The two brothers who attacked Paris satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, leaving 12 people dead, were known radicals.

Cherif Kouachi, 32, was convicted in 2008 for involvement in a network sending fighters to Iraq. His brother Said, 34, was known to have travelled to Yemen in 2011, where he received weapons training from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Amedy Coulibaly, 32 — who met Kouachi in prison — was sentenced to five years in 2013 for his role in a failed bid to break an Algerian Islamist out of jail.

All three men were killed during raids by security forces on Friday, but not before slaughtering 17 people.

A former DGSE agent feared that the challenge facing the security forces will become even more complex.

More names of those released from prison in the 1990s and early 2000s could now be added to the list in the wake of the attacks.

“We already do not have resources to handle the Syrian crisis, those who return to our country,” Claude Moniquet, now co-director of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center in Brussels, told AFP.

“If we have to add several hundred people who were active in or around, for example, Algerian networks in the 1990s and 2000s, that will considerably complicate the task.”

A series of attacks blamed on Algerian extremists occurred in France in the 1990s.

Moniquet said he believed radicals like Kouachi and Coulibaly would have been closely monitored when first released from prison, but intelligence agents would gradually shift focus if nothing notable occurred.

“But there is still a problem: When you see that, with his CV as a multiple repeat offender and terrorist, Coulibaly could meet Sarkozy in person … In the United States, he would not have had the right to walk on the pavement in the neighborhood of the White House.”

A further problem involves increasing surveillance without putting civil liberties at risk — an impossibility to at least some degree, said Moniquet.

“It raises the question of efficiency of the intelligence services and resources, but also an ethical question about the right to be forgotten and the right to start a new life when you have a terrorist record,” he said.

“Certainly there are people who sort themselves out after having paid their debt to society, but when it comes to terrorism cases, there are a good number who re-offend. It remains a minority, but it is a significant minority.”