France admits to it’s intelligence failure that could have prevented the attacks in Paris. Turkish officials had warned both Belgium and France about some of the jihadis behind the killing of one hundred and thirty people in the attacks. One French official who remains anonymous said:
“No need to fool ourselves. What we have in front of us is a complete failure.”
Turkey had detained Brahim Abdeslam at the border because he was suspected of wanting to join ISIS in Syria. Turkish officials notified Belgium before they deported Abdeslam back to Belgium. They told Belgium that he had become radicalized and was a threat.
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Belgium police questioned him but releasede him after he swore he was not a radical Muslim. (This is the same tough screening that Syrian refugees will undergo) His brother, Salah, is also suspected of being part of the terrorist gang who attacked Paris.
In December of last year, Turkey came to believe that Ismail Omar Mostefai was a terrorist and the immediately contacted the French, who never answered their message until after Paris was attacked. What? They didn’t want to be called racist for questioning Mostefai? Why after the Charlie Hebdo attack did the French take this threat seriously, until it was too late? Turkey raised a second alarm on Mostefai in June of 2015 and again it was ignored.
French authorities claim that Mostefai was put on a type of terror watch list way back in 2010They knew that Mostefai had 8 convictions on petty crimes and the suspected that Mostefai had been in Syria in late 2013 to early in 2014. You would think they could have connected the dots. Someone’s head should roll for ignoring all the warnings that led to so many deaths and injuries.
From the Daily Mail:
Bilal Hadfi, who blew himself up outside the Stade de France, was another of the suicide attackers under surveillance.
After visiting Syria in February, the 20-year-old French national, who was living in Belgium, returned to Europe by an unknown route and evaded police even though the Belgian Justice Ministry said microphones had been placed at the house where he was thought to be staying.
Then there’s the case of Sami Amimour, who killed many at the Bataclan theatre. French authorities had launched an official investigation into Amimour’s possible terrorism-related activity in October 2012. Prosecutors suspected him of planning to join militants in Yemen.
Amimour was a bus driver who had been radicalized in a mosque near his hometown of Drancy, north of Paris. Because of the investigation, police had ordered Amimour to check in with them every week. He missed four weekly checks in 2013. But it was only after nearly a month that the authorities put out an international arrest warrant.
By then Amimour was already in Syria. His tracks were picked up a year later, in December 2014, when his father gave an interview to French daily Le Monde describing how he had traveled to Syria but failed to convince his son to return.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud was well known to French authorities also. He had allegedly already been involved in previous terror attacks including the one on Verviers,Belgium in which French authorities suspected him of wanting to kidnap a police officer and kill him.
Add it all up and the French intelligence network shares a lot of the blame for the Paris terror attacks. Obviously, they failed to monitor known and suspected terrorists.
