Terror Attack Expected On French Soil As Radicalisation In France Refuses To Die Down

A 16-year-old boy was arrested in Paris for allegedly plotting to carry out an attack. France’s intelligence services alerted the police on detecting a threat, which soon led to the boy’s arrest.

The arrest followed French Prime Minister Manuel Valls’ statement in an interview with Europe 1 radio and Itele television that there is a possibility of fresh attacks on French soil. He made the statement on Sunday (11 Sept.) in light of the event the previous week when French officials said they foiled the plans of a terrorist cell guided by the Islamic State to attack a railway station in Paris.

“There will be new attacks, there will be innocent victims... this is also my role to tell this truth to the French people,” said Valls. The French Prime Minister also said police and intelligent services have spotted 15,000 people in the process of being radicalised.

Even then Valls spoke against former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s suggestions to take stringent security measures. In an interview to Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD), Sarkozy suggested that France should create special courts and detention facilities to house French citizens with suspicious militant links.

The measures Sarkozy suggest will remind one of Guantanamo, opened during President George W Bush’s reign, which held prisoners rounded up overseas when the United States became involved in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But Sarkozy rebutted that analogy. “In France, any administrative confinement is subject to subsequent control by a judge.”

With measures taken by the French government in recent times with regards to banning the burkini and the hijab, it is to be seen if the French government goes the American way in handling terror.