For decades, Seine-Saint-Denis has been, along with other Ile-de-France departments, one of the bastions of radical Islam in France.
It is therefore not surprising that a Minister of the Interior committed to the fight against separatism comes there every three months, in particular on this subject.
Gérald Darmanin, who went to Bobigny on Thursday, also meets very regularly with the prefect of the department, Georges-François Leclerc.
The latter was particularly involved in the fight against radical places of worship, in close contact with town halls and representatives of the Muslim faith.
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Since September 2020, six radical places of worship have been closed for administrative reasons, which represents a third of the mosques or radical prayer rooms closed across France.
To these six closures, we must add that of the Pantin mosque, announced by the Minister the day after the beheading of Samuel Paty.
The imam had broadcast the video attacking and defaming this history professor from a college in Val d'Oise murdered by an 18-year-old Islamist terrorist motivated by what he had seen on social networks.
On Thursday, the Minister of the Interior clarified that the State was not opposed, in principle, to a rapid reopening of the said mosque.
But to do this, he was waiting for the departure of other officials, beyond the already effective one of the implicated imam.
Charter with town halls
Another project led by the prefect, the essential one of the relationship with elected officials and exchanges on questions of radicalization.
The theme had been addressed by mayors, especially after the attacks in Trèbes and Carcassonne in March 2018 and the Head of State had heard these requests.
On November 13, 2018, the Ministry of the Interior sent the prefects an instruction on “the implementation of a reinforced dialogue between the State and the mayors”.
The Seine-Saint-Denis prefecture has already signed nine confidentiality charters with town halls.
This represents the double advantage of allowing elected officials to discreetly report information and the State to inform these same elected officials just as discreetly while respecting the necessary intelligence rules.
On another note, Seine-Saint-Denis was, in February 2020, the first department to be endowed with a departmental unit for the fight against Islamism and community withdrawal, which brings together, in a global approach to the phenomenon of separatism , a set of State services beyond the sole sphere of the sovereign.
In this context, since January 1, 2021, sixteen establishments suspected of links with radical Islam have been closed in the department for non-compliance with the rules applying to establishments open to the public.
The list looks like a Prévert inventory (from the shisha bar to the hairdressing salon, including the cosmetics store, the grocery store or the hallal fast-food).
But specialists have long known that this harassment policy is effective.
And that it is essential in a department which has, active or non-active files, some 1000 individuals registered in the file of alerts for the prevention of terrorist radicalization.
