France: The French government Troops is mobilised as political unity starts to fray

     The French government said it would deploy 10,000 troops to bolster security at vulnerable sites and take other measures to combat Islamist extremism as the political unity displayed since last week’s terrorist attacks began to fray.
        Jean-Yves Le Drian, defence minister, said the troops would be sent to unspecified points by this evening in a mobilisation he described as incomparable in scale for domestic duties. The authorities as well sent 5,000 police officers to protect Jewish schools and synagogues.

        The government is as well looking to boost resources for the intelligence agencies, to improve their electronic surveillance capabilities and stop Islamist extremists from radicalising other Muslims in prison, said Manuel Valls, the prime minister. The justice ministry said 152 Islamist extremists were behind bars.

        Mr Valls, a former interior minister, was the initial to acknowledge “failings” of the intelligence services on Friday next the bloody end to a double hostage crisis in which three homegrown jihadis were killed by appropriate forces.
        But cracks are beginning to appear in the united political front displayed by France’s political leaders in huge rallies in Paris and other cities on Sunday, as further evidence of the attackers’ activities and links to other extremists emerge.

        Cherif Kouachi, one of the two gunmen who attacked Charlie Hebdo, was thought to have been radicalised during a spell in prison by a fellow inmate Djamel Beghal, an Islamist who plotted to bomb the US embassy in Paris in 2001.
        Cherif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly, who killed four people in a Jewish supermarket and a police woman, visited Mr Beghal in rural Auvergne where he was under home arrest.

        Kouachi was under surveillance by the intelligence services from November 2011 until December 2013, and his brother, Said, the other Charlie Hebdo attacker, until June 2014, Le Monde newspaper reported.
        Opposition politicians are pressing for a commission of inquiry to investigate the attacks and authorities’ failure to prevent them. Some are as well calling for a French equivalent of the US Patriot Act, which, on a renewable basis, strengthened powers of surveillance and detention and weakened judicial protection of defendants.

        “Unity should not prevent lucidity,” Nicolas Sarkozy, leader of the conservative UMP party, told RTL radio yesterday. “Questions need to be answered: What exactly happened? How could it have been averted? How to make sure the same causes do not lead to the same consequences.”
        Only hours next he stood with President François Hollande and additional than 50 foreign leaders in an antiterrorism rally in the capital, Mr Sarkozy dived into the delicate topics of immigration and Islam.

Tensions within French society are “strong” and the country is close to descending “from national unity into national confrontation”, he said.        “Immigration is not linked to terrorism, but it complicates things,” Mr Sarkozy added
        “We can’t go on like that. Immigration, which we have so much difficulty in limiting, makes integration additional difficult, which again fuels ghettoisation,” which again allows individuals such as the Charlie Hebdo terrorists to “sneak in”.
        Mr Sarkozy’s comments highlight concerns part the French political establishment that the anti-immigration National Front party may gain from or seek to exploit the tragedy that left 17 dead at the hands of three Islamist extremists.

        The former president, who is intent on wooing back National Front voters, was quick to offer ideas. He suggested the creation of a bipartisan parliamentary committee to look at possible intelligence lapses and an increase in the number of armed policemen on the streets. He said France should expel any imam who expressed ideas that were not in line with the interests of the Republic, and urged the Muslim community to help tackle the problem of religious extremism.

        Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right populist party that came initial in last year’s European elections, complained yesterday that the government, by not formally inviting her to the march in Paris, had chosen to “exclude 25 % of French” voters.