And it couldn’t come at a worse time.
The brazen murders of 17 innocent people, in three separate attacks in as many days, has led to a fabled city shaken, shocked and in mourning.
The new concerns raise the serious possibility that national security and surveillance of suspected terrorists in France will need to be increased or totally reviewed and revamped to provide better safety for the nation as a whole, some experts told CNN. And with one of the suspected terrorists still on the loose of as Sunday night and new reports of “sleeper cells” being activated, the security concerns are only amplified.
On Saturday, French police were told in a briefing that sleeper cells have been activated over the past 24 hours inside France, terror expert Samuel Laurent said he had been told by a police source. He said officers were told to erase all visible online presence on social media and keep their weapons on themselves at all times, he said.
“There is a huge security failure those people were all considered as extremely dangerous,” said Laurent, a French expert who has written several books on terror groups, their actions and jihadism.
“They were all supposed to be monitored. In the U.S., they were on a no-fly list. So we can ask the question whether the U.S. is more able to monitor French jihadis on French territory than the French intelligence itself,” said Laurent.
Terrifying complaint: Terrorists have upper hand
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The French responded by placing Said Kouachi under surveillance in November 2011 by issuing a “Fiche de Surveillance” notice, multiple French officials told Pelletier. The surveillance was conducted by both DGSI, France’s domestic security service and later by the judicial police. Wiretaps were authorized for his cell phones and that of his brother Cherif.
But the surveillance of Said was terminated in June 2014 because French security services judged him no longer dangerous, Pelletier was told. The surveillance of his brother Cherif stopped earlier — at the end of 2013. Cherif’s phone calls suggested he had disengaged with violent extremism and was focusing on counterfeiting clothing and shoes.
“The fact that al Qeada’s affiliate in Yemen pulled off the most deadly terrorist attack in Europe in a decade speaks for itself,” said CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen, an expert on al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. “Groups like al Qaeda in Yemen, as well as ISIS and other jihadist groups in the Middle East, are likely to continue to be a problem in Europe for the foreseeable future.”
“Hindsight is, of course, always 20/20. In the case of a large-scale terrorist attack, there is often intelligence in the system that was overlooked before the event,” said Bergen.
“The CIA, for instance, knew that two men associated with al Qaeda were living in the United States who later turned out to be among the hijackers of the flight that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11; the lead bomber in the London bombings of 2005 was known to British law enforcement, and the Fort Hood shooter, Major Nidal Hasan, had come to the attention of the FBI because of emails he exchanged before the attack with Anwar al-Awlaki, an al Qaeda leader based in Yemen.
“This time it’s the French that dropped the ball, but this is not a problem particular to France.”
