The “Bataclan of Moscow”, the worst jihadist attack committed on the European continent since those of November 13, 2015, is turning France upside down again in a nightmare scenario.
Perpetrated Friday evening nearly 3,000 kilometers from Paris, with a death toll of at least 137 including three children and claimed by the Islamic State group in Khorasan (EI-K), this carnage caused a shock wave to the summit of State.
Sunday evening, after a Defense and National Security Council chaired by Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée, Matignon decided to raise the posture of the Vigipirate plan to the “emergency attack” level, that is to say to its “maximum” threshold. » which formerly corresponded to the color scarlet.
In theory intended to last a limited time, that of crisis management, it makes it possible in particular to ensure the mobilization of coercive means, combined with the need for exceptional measures, such as the closure of roads, the metro or even the cessation of travel. schools.
“
We are going to multiply ourselves further and deploy exceptional means everywhere to suffocate Islamism, which is a spiral of hatred, feeds on our naivety and wants to kill the Republic
,” Gabriel Attal declared on Monday.
From Saint-Lazare station, the Prime Minister announced the reinforcement of 4,000 additional soldiers as part of the Sentinel missions, which until now mobilized 3,000 soldiers.
Without delay, the “sandbag” method is deployed throughout the territory where a thousand dangers lurk.
As Catholics enter Holy Week until Easter Monday, foot and car patrols will be deployed to secure the country's 42,000 churches.
By the thousands, police officers and gendarmes will increase patrols in train stations and airports while searches and screening operations will be reinforced at the entrance to performance halls.
Finally, uniformed crews have been patrolling the surroundings of educational establishments since nearly 130 high schools and colleges were targeted, in one week, by threats of bomb attacks - sometimes accompanied by videos of beheadings - via the digital spaces of work (ENT), in Île-de-France, Hauts-de-France and the Grand Est region.
Package of measures
Four months before the opening ceremony of the very high-risk Olympic Games, the implementation of this set of measures increases, as if it were still necessary, the pressure on French services.
Even if the organizers repeat like a mantra that “
it is the spirit of the celebration that must take precedence
”, the strategists of Place Beauvau are aware of the security Himalayas that stand before them: this planetary meeting , followed by more than 1 billion spectators, will offer the enemies of France the opportunity to strike her in the heart.
“
The French police, the gendarmes, the prefects and the intelligence services will be ready
”, wanted to reassure Gérald Darmanin on Monday from the Lille metropolis, well aware that “
France, because it carries universal values, that it is for secularism (…) is particularly threatened, particularly during these extraordinary events that will be the Olympic Games
.”
More than ever, the services will monitor the approximately 5,200 radicalized people who are actively monitored in the report file for the prevention of radicalization of a terrorist nature (FSPRT).
France's top cop did not wait for the attack on Moscow to sound the alarm.
“
In addition, the tense international context as well as the attacks in Arras and Brussels in October and Paris in December 2023 had the effect of confirming the increase in the general level of the jihadist threat on the national territory
,” added The Minister.
For the record, since 2012, France has been the scene of 25 attacks causing 273 deaths and several hundred injured, knowing that 21 Islamist attacks failed and 75 planned attacks were foiled.
If France, and other European countries such as Italy, have decided to raise their guard, it is in fact because the Moscow attack is a message addressed to all the countries targeted by the Islamic State .
Friday evening, in its claim, Daesh also mentioned not Russia and Vladimir Putin, but an attack "
against a large gathering of Christians
" carried out "
in the context of the war raging between
(Daesh)
and the countries fighting against 'Islam
'.
But Paris knows perfectly well that the Islamic State, and particularly its Afghan branch the Islamic State-Khorasan, seeks just as much to strike "
Christians
" (or other targets) in France, a "
country fighting Islam
" according to the EI-K.
On Monday, Emmanuel Macron also underlined that EI-K “
had carried out several attempts on our own soil in recent months
”.
The head of state confirmed, without giving further details, that after the Moscow attack, France had offered Russia “
increased cooperation
”.
A proposal which illustrates the reality and intensity that “collective jihadism” weighs on all “disbelievers” regardless of their nationality.
EI-K, a formidable organization
The threat is all the more serious as EI-K (by its “official” name “Islamic State in Iraq and Cham-Wilaya of Khorasan”, born in 2014) is a formidable organization which took advantage of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. In 2022, UN experts attributed some 4,000 fighters to it, of whom “
nearly half are foreign terrorists
”.
However, this same EI-K has appeared on the radars of French and European intelligence services for more than a year.
In November 2022, in Strasbourg, a few days before the opening of the Christmas market, police officers from the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) arrested two jihadists, a Tajik and a Russian of Chechen origin, who had come from Arrive in France.
For investigators, the two men were sponsored by EI-K to strike in France.
In July 2023, six Tajiks and three other citizens of Central Asian countries (two Kyrgyz, one Turkmen) were arrested in turn, but this time in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Some of the suspects were false refugees who transited through Ukraine.
Six months later, again in Germany but also in Austria and Spain, several Tajiks linked to EI-K were arrested.
For German investigators, they targeted Christian places of worship like Cologne Cathedral.
Finally, on March 19, three days before the Moscow attack, German police arrested two Afghans in connection with EI-K in a state in the east of the country.
The two men are accused of having prepared an attack in Sweden to “punish” this country after the affair of the Korans burned during demonstrations.
They were looking for weapons and planned to open fire on the crowd near the Swedish Parliament.
But the impact of the Moscow attack is not limited to the actions of EI-K.
It can also have repercussions on the endogenous movement bringing together individuals without operational links with Daesh, but who may be motivated by the success of the operation and decide to take action with rudimentary means (knife, ram vehicle, etc.).
Because since Friday evening, the jihadist movement has been exulting and hailing a “success” against the “kouffar”.
Like the massacres perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, the Moscow horror can have consequences.
Finally, note that the terrorist who carried out the attack on Bir Hakeim on December 2 said he was motivated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but had also adopted the nom de guerre of Abu Talha al-Khorasani,
“a reference
, according to the national anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-François Ricard,
to the Islamic State terrorist organization currently acting from Afghanistan
.
Never has the specter of threat been so present.