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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (82710)	11/2/2004 10:04:04 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793892

High Pressure Tactics 02 November, 2004 EUROSOC Which European nation has the toughest record in fighting terror at home? Britain, with its decades of experience of IRA terror and its current role as al-Qaeda target? Spain, with domestic terror of its own and memories of the Madrid massacre still raw? Actually, it's France. Yes, France, favourite whipping-boy of the right-wing press for its supposedly endless attempts to ingratiate itself with Islamist extremists. The Washington Post gives a broad overview of the situation. Earlier this year, some EU countries had their Guantanamo Bay terror suspect citizens returned to their care. In Britain, the media contrived to give the men a heroes welcome. The home office was more sanguine, revealing that surveillance of each of the six suspects released will cost £1 million per year. Sweden's returnees were given legal aid by their government to sue the US government for "wrongful imprisonment." In France, however, the four prisoners who were sent back in July haven't been heard from since. They were whisked off by French security forces, who say that they could be held for up to three years without charge. The men are not thought to have been planning terror attacks in France, but the authorities reason quite correctly that anyone travelling to Afghanistan under Taliban and al-Qaeda rule should have their motives and experiences questioned extremely closely. France seems to take its obligations to its citizens seriously. It has some of the west's most draconian anti-terror legislation, and its controversial measures - which the Washington Post says could be illegal in the United States - have yet to raise a grumble from France's citizens. Where Britain respects the "rights" of clerics calling for the slaughter of Jews, France boots them out of the country: It has shown the door to a dozen this year alone. President Jacques Chirac, reacting to moans from lawyers that the expulsions broke the law, countered that if the law allowed clerics to poison France with support for terror, he would change the law. Furthermore, France is unsentimental about dealing with terrorists who pose a threat. The suspect behind the mid-1990s RER suburban railways bombs was shot dead in a street while fleeing police. A group of Algerian terrorists who hijacked a plane in 1994 and threatened to crash it into the Eiffel Tower were killed in an assault on the plane by French special forces. The special forces were presented with one of France's top military awards by then President, Francois Mitterand. In Britain, they would still be facing an enquiry. Despite a breakdown in relations between Washington and Paris over Iraq, the French insist that intelligence forces from both nations have been working closely together. French security forces claim to have foiled attacks on the US embassy in Paris and the Strasbourg Christmas market, as well as a number of attacks on the island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean, a favourite French holiday destination. Indeed, increased cooperation with France could be in the United States' interest. With a population of 5 million Muslims and a long tradition of Arabism , France has no shortage of Arabic speakers. France's Intelligence services employs large numbers of Arabic speakers to translate communications and to infiltrate radical groups - and often uses the threat of imprisonment to beef up street-level information sources. It's this threat of arrest that France claims is its most effective tool in its war on terror. French anti-terror judges and prosecutors are granted great powers of arrest and detention, including the use of surveillance and interrogation methods which would be controversial in the UK or US. Leading anti-terror judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere says that France is simply being practical: "When you have your enemy in your own territory, whether in Europe or in North America, you can't use military forces because it would be inappropriate and contrary to the law. So you have to use new forces, new weapons." Furthermore, judges like Bruguiere can order the arrest of anyone on the vague charge of "conspiracy in relation to terrorism." Over 500 people have been held on this charge alone, which allows investigators to hold suspects while enquiries are carried out. It has even led to suspects who have evaded justice in other countries being flown to and dumped in France for detention and interrogation. Bruguiere continues, "There is no equivalent anywhere else in Europe. This provision is very, very efficient for judicial rule in tackling terrorist support networks. "Fighting terrorism is like the weather. You have high pressure zones and low pressure zones." Countries that have low pressure zones attract terrorism. While France's methods have attracted criticism from human rights groups, there is said to be support for the measures within the Muslim community, as well as the broader French public. After all, Muslims suffer in terror attacks too, and most in France have no stomach for preachers who attempt to radicalise youngsters with bloodthirsty calls to jihad. Above all, the French are a pragmatic lot. Holding terrorists without trial may go against the grand republican ideals of liberty and equality, but the French would argue that it seems to work.