Nice
terror attack is a crisis for presidency of François Hollande
France’s
security policy and Hollande’s leadership were already under the
spotlight following the devastating attacks in Paris in November
Angelique Chrisafis
Friday 15 July 2016
08.27 BST
The French
president, François Hollande, has reacted to the Nice attack by
reiterating the war-like stance he took after the Islamic State
attacks that killed 130 people in Paris in November.
But the fact that
France was attacked again – leaving at least 80 dead – only eight
months after the devastating November attacks on a Paris stadium,
bars and a rock concert, constitutes a crisis for Hollande’s
premiership.
“All of France is
under threat from Islamist terrorism,” said an ashen-faced Hollande
in a televised address from the presidential palace just before 4am,
hours after a driver ploughed a lorry at high speed into a crowd
gathered on the Nice seafront to watch the Bastille Day fireworks.
“Nothing will make
us yield in our will to fight terrorism. We will further strengthen
our actions in Iraq and in Syria,” he said, referring to France’s
current airstrikes on Isis. “We will continue striking those who
attack us on our own soil.”
He said France would
“always be stronger, I promise you, than the fanatics that want to
strike it.”
In Nice, the
interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, added: “We are at war with
terrorists who want to strike us at every cost and who are extremely
violent.”
Nicolas Sarkozy, the
former president who has announced his intention to run again in
2017, said: “We’re in a war set to last, with a threat that is
constantly renewing itself.”
The socialist
Hollande – who had already emphatically hardened his line on
national security after the November attacks – announced he would
increase border security and beef up existing home security measures
already in place.
A man pays his
respect outside the Le Carillon restaurant the morning after the
attacks in Paris in November. Photograph: Christian Hartmann/Reuters
The state of
emergency introduced in November – which allows police to conduct
house raids and searches without a warrant or judicial oversight, and
gives extra powers to officials to place people under house arrest –
will be extended by three months, Hollande announced. There will also
be a boost to the military operation, known as Operation Sentinelle,
in which 10,000 soldiers keep guard across the country, and
reservists will be drafted in to help security forces.
But Hollande, who
will hold emergency security talks at the Elysée this morning before
flying to Nice, will now have to address the horror and pain of a
nation that has already been rocked by three major attacks in 18
months, and several smaller-scale killings.
A total of 147
people were killed in attacks in 2015 – from January’s gun
attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices and a kosher grocery store to
the coordinated gun and bomb attacks on 13 November. Nice will add at
least 80 deaths to this toll.
The fact that many
children were among the dead and seriously injured in Nice has
deepened France’s sorrow and grief.
The mood could not
be more serious for Hollande. After the period of national mourning,
there is likely to be intense political debate about intelligence and
security policy. The 2017 French presidential election is nine months
away and security had already been a key voter concern.
Hollande had this
month been at record low popularity ratings. Marine Le Pen, the
far-right leader of the Front National, has been polling high and
recent polls showed she was expected to reach the second round
run-off of the presidential election, held in April and May, although
the polls predicted she would not win. Sarkozy’s rightwing Les
Républicains party is currently engaged in a primary race to choose
its candidate.
Early on Friday
morning, authorities had not confirmed the exact motive for the Nice
attack.
In recent months
France was already seen by its head of internal intelligence as the
country most under threat from jihadi terrorism. The government had
said authorities had foiled attacks in the past year. The question of
preventing attacks will now be a key part of the political debate of
the coming months.
The Nice attack came
days after the end of the Euro 2016 football tournament, where a
record 90,000 security staff had been deployed and which the country
had been celebrating as passing off peacefully.
Hours before the
Nice attack, Hollande – who appears keen to run for re-election but
is not expected to announce his candidacy until the end of the year –
had used his Bastille Day television interview to re-iterate his new
slogan that “things are getting better”. He had said in that
interview that the state of emergency would not be renewed beyond 26
July, after the end of another sporting fixture, the cycling Tour de
France. He was forced to revise that when the attack hit Nice.
The threat of
terrorism and doubts about France’s handling of it have been
swirling in recent days. Last week, a French parliamentary
investigation into the 2015 attacks on Paris identified multiple
failings by intelligence agencies.
The parliamentary
commission – set up to assess the failure to prevent a series of
attacks last year – highlighted a “global failure” of French
intelligence and recommended a total overhaul of the intelligence
services and the creation of a single, US-style national
counter-terrorism agency.
“Our country was
not ready; now we must get ready,” Georges Fenech, head of the
commission, said.
France has six
intelligence units answering variously to the interior, defence and
economy ministries.
Fenech said the
multi-layered, cumbersome intelligence apparatus was like an army of
soldiers wearing lead boots. He said that without the multiple
intelligence failings, the attack on the Bataclan rock concert in
Paris, which killed 90, could have been prevented.
Interior minister
Cazeneuve had this week rejected the idea of a total overhaul of
intelligence services. He said some of the report’s other
recommendations were already being put in place.
Also this week, a
lawyer for victims of the November’s attacks said the families
planned to sue the French state for failing to avert the attacks
carried out by assailants known to the security services.
In a separate case,
a court found the French state partly at fault over the killing of a
French soldier in 2012 by Mohamed Merah, a militant whose activities
had been tracked for some time by police and security services. Merah
first killed three soldiers, without being stopped by police, before
days later killing three children and a teacher outside a Jewish
school in Toulouse before being shot dead in a police siege at his
flat.
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