Image source, Getty Images
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- author, Hugh Scofield
- Author title, BBC News, Paris
Ten years after the Bataclan massacre in France, there has been a new reminder that the jihadist threat remains present.
A former associate of the only jihadist to survive the November 2015 attacks has been arrested on suspicion of planning a new attack.
The woman, a 27-year-old French convert to Islam identified as Maëva B, began a messaging relationship with Salah Abdeslam, 36, who is serving a life sentence in a prison near the Belgian border after being convicted in 2022.
When prison guards discovered that Abdel Salam was using a USB flash drive for jihadist propaganda, they traced the origin of the matter to personal meetings the prisoner had with Maeva B.
Investigators then examined Maëva B’s computer and phone, finding signs that she may have been planning a jihadist attack, and on Monday she was placed under judicial investigation along with two of her alleged accomplices.
The worst terrorist attack in French history
On the 10th anniversary of the worst attack in modern French history, the arrest shines a spotlight on the enemy within the country that has never gone away.
On the night of November 13, 2015, gunmen and suicide jihadists carried out a series of coordinated attacks, culminating in a bloody attack on the Bataclan concert hall in eastern Paris.
Image source, Getty Images
First, three suicide bombers blew themselves up in front of the Stade de France, where an international soccer match was being held, and then other members of the group opened fire with Kalashnikov rifles at people who were in bars and cafes near the Bataclan.
A concert by the American group Eagles of Death Metal had just begun there, when three jihadists burst into the room and opened fire randomly inside the room; They took hostages and then blew themselves up when the police arrived.
In all, 130 people died, 90 of them at the Bataclan, more than 400 received medical care in hospitals, and countless others suffered psychological trauma.
Since then, the word Bataclan has become synonymous with Islamic extremist attacks in France, such as the September 11 attacks in the United States.
Although there have been other attacks since then, such as the mass truck crash in Nice in July 2016 and the beheading of Professor Samuel Paty in October 2020, the scale and organization of the November 13, 2015 attack made this attack very different.
Ten years later, many things have changed.
The disappearance of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS) as a major force in Syria and Iraq has led to a significant reduction in the resources needed to conceive, plan and implement complex terrorist projects.
Image source, Reuters
An “internal and much smaller” threat.
The Bataclan attackers were young men, mostly of North African origin, who were recruited in Belgium and France, trained in ISIS areas in the Middle East, and then returned to Europe hiding among a large migrant population.
Everywhere they can rely on a support network that provides them with shelter, transportation and money.
According to Jill Keppel, a leading expert on the Middle East, intelligence services have become very effective in controlling extremism online.
He declared in an interview with the British newspaper “Daily Mail” that “they now have access to computer resources… that allow them to discover many individual, often uncomplicated initiatives… and stop them before they bear fruit.” Figaro.
But according to Keppel, the danger now lies in what he calls “environmental jihadism.”
“The threat is now internal and much younger. It feeds off of friendships and social networks of like-minded people, without necessarily anyone giving orders or obeying them,” he added.
Image source, Reuters
He added that the threat is all the more worrying because of its great pervasiveness: events in Gaza and Israel have a “painful impact” on the minds of many citizens and are “exploited by those dedicated to venting their anger.”
He said the current political crisis in France is also fueling the danger, as an incapacitated presidency gives way to a partisan parliament in which extremists on the left and right enjoy increasing influence.
“If what divides us becomes more important than what unites us as a French people and breaks the national consensus, an abyss will open under our feet and violence will have fewer and fewer limits,” he warned.
Memory of the massacre
On Thursday, commemorations will be held throughout the day at various sites of the attacks, culminating in the opening of a park on November 13 near Paris City Hall.
As night falls, the Eiffel Tower will light up in the red, white and blue colors of the French flag.
French media reported many testimonies and memories, where survivors described how their lives changed.
Image source, Getty Images
Unexpectedly, Salah Abdel Salam, through his lawyer, expressed his willingness to cooperate in any restorative justice initiative, a procedure in which victims and perpetrators come together to analyze the impact of the crime.
Some families have considered the idea, but others are strongly against it.
According to Laurent Sourisseau, the cartoonist known as Reiss, who was shot in the attack on Charlie Hebdo A few months before the Bataclan massacre, Abdeslam’s presentation was “perverse.”
“Restorative justice exists for other types of crimes, ordinary crimes,” he claimed.
“But terrorism is not an ordinary crime. Salah Abdel Salam wants us to believe that his crime was like any other crime. But it was not.”
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