Death at Christmas

(To Paolo Palumbo)
12/12/18

A terrorist attack is always a shocking event for those who suffer it, but an attack of Islamist matrix in a Christmas market in the city of Strasbourg, capital of the European Parliament, is certainly a major impact of the media. The terrorists now know them, we know that the search for spectacularity is one of their fundamental points modus operandi. In the same way we have unveiled what are the reactions of the police with the usual hunt for the killer, obviously already known to justice for some memorable time. The thing that scares the most is the place chosen for this umpteenth armed Islamist assault which, although no official claim has yet been received, reports to the chronicle what is the real danger to the West. Terrorism strikes when you least expect it, does not have a clear agenda: the jihadists remain in their silent lairs for months, even years, and then manifest themselves in all their ruthlessness when you least expect it. Defense Online is among the newspapers that has highlighted the danger that lies behind this "silence" not only from al-Qaeda, but also from other small organizations that - thanks to sleeping cells - are presumably reorganizing themselves, drawing inspiration from the ruins of the Islamic State or from a revived al-Qaeda.

The Europe of these last months has appeared more and more clumsy, suffocated by a wall of problems of an economic nature, divided between the consequences of Brexit and Italy that does not want to bring the accounts. For heaven's sake, this does not mean that intelligence has stopped working, but the problem of "Islamism / radicalization" has reached such a microscopic dimension that it escapes the meshes of justice. The new type of attacks - we have had several examples - tends to develop in an occult way, starting from a slow and progressive individual radicalization that can not be stopped, let alone harnessed by the police forces. Whenever a thing like that happens in Strasbourg, we are flooded with pages and pages of reports on Islamist radicalism, on young people born to immigrant families and on the conditions of apparent unease in which they live. When we hear the phrase "already known to justice" we immediately point the finger on the police bodies which, for the communal vulgate, "should have arrested the suspect before he hit". But on what assumptions? A thief or a drug dealer is not a terrorist, although his nationality is suspect, he can not be imprisoned in advance for terrorism unless there is a well-founded suspicion about his alleged radicalization or contacts with jihadist organizations. These two elements too often escape the guarded eye of the police, but not those of the community in which the suspect lives. Chérif, the gunslinger of Strasbourg, is defined as a "common criminal" about to be stopped by the gendarmerie; yet the Moroccan managed equally to escape three times the arrest, thanks to a screen of accomplices ready to go into action to cover their movements.

A similar dilemma becomes unsolvable, especially when compared to French legislation, for which the expulsion of a potential terrorist like Chérif becomes a difficult case. Months ago, constitutionalist Dominique Chagnollaud gave an interview on Le Figaro explaining the impediments connected to the removal of subjects - French citizens - such as the Moroccan Chérif, classified as "Fiché S". We are faced with the usual fears, gloved of white, of the Western democracies who can not react decisively to an Islamist offensive that draws its strength from this cautious and hypocritically "humanitarian" attitude.

But what is a suspected "Fiché S"? In France there is an immense repertoire called FPR or "fichier des personnes recherchées" that collects the files of about 400.000 suspects, shared by the police, gendarmerie and intelligence services. The French register - formed at the beginning of the sixties - is divided into several categories, including the section S dedicated to people assessed as a potential threat to state security. Category S suspects are in turn classified according to a scale of values ​​corresponding to their danger, which reaches up to a maximum degree of 16. Of course, the registers on these lists are not all terrorists: some are simply political activists, others are particularly agitated or debtors towards the Treasury. The most aggressive can be put under surveillance both physically and thanks to the interceptions, however - points out Louis Caprioli former leader of the French anti-terrorism - are operations that are unfriendly and not continuous.

The situation of the FSPRT archive is different, not to be confused with the FPR.

In the 2015, after the terrible attacks on Charlie Hebdo, the FSPRT was established (fichier des signalements pour la prévention et la radicalisation à caractère terroriste) dedicated especially to the problem of radicalization. To date, in the file, we find the names of about 20.000 people registered according to parameters that concern the place of residence, the precedents and also the psychological profile. The UCLAT (Unité de coordination de la lutte antiterroriste) is responsible for the inclusion of those at risk in the repertoire occupied by maschi males. Through this list the French government, thanks to the capillary work of the Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure, maintains strict control over Islamists who are likely to become terrorists.

What is most surprising is that despite the myriad of bodies in charge of control, the Christmas market in Strasbourg was not adequately guarded because already in 2000 the al-Qaeda jihadists had targeted that place. Strasbourg, together with the Lyon and Paris area, is in fact a cornerstone of Islamism and many of the S-classifieds reside in that part of France: some of the Bataclan bombers came from this region, corroborating the existence of a very active strasbourg cell .

Starting from an old adage on the growing potential of evil, let us therefore remember that terrorism never sleeps and despite the news they do not spend longer reports on the Islamic State or on al-Qaeda the danger is concrete. The fragmentation of macro organizations has created numerous satellites, even of negligible size, which hide lethal potentials put in place by individual zealous Islamists "next door" armed with a gun or a simple penknife. The numerous MEPs have also noticed, busy on the streets of Strasbourg in the usual consumption of coffee, pizzas or Lucullian dinners; they are the same ones who dress up as paladins of tolerance, ready to shoot at zero on the work of the police, but at the slightest noise they stick their heads under the table. In those moments they hope to hear a siren or to see a man dressed in black with the word "POLICE" on his back; the same man who condemned as soon as he uses the somewhat strong ways with some terrorist to extort information. They are the MEPs whose benevolence towards the different is consumed in their living rooms or in the halls of the hotels or among the scagni of the European Palace, between a smile and some joke, without ever having crossed the border of some banlieu or stuck his nose in one coffee suburbs. Programs, projects, thousands of pages written to understand the process of radicalization, without having the slightest culture of what security means, but above all with the firm will not to lose their miserable privileges. The concepts of tolerance and defense of the community are deliberately confused, since it is a play on words in the hands of politics that makes its own profit. Terrorism lives and feeds on this misunderstanding, because it diverts interest from the real problem, confusing itself among a thousand other false problems. The Christmas / Islam / Terrorism equation is now on the plate of the usual right-thinking, xenophobes of the extreme right, as is the Radical Chic formula that wants to eliminate our tradition for fear of offending those who do not think like us. As long as you travel on these two tracks of dullness, terrorists will find their way flat.