PARIS, March 30, (Agencies): French police arrested 19 people in a crackdown on suspected Islamist networks Friday as President Nicolas Sarkozy made the battle against extremism the keynote of his re-election campaign.
Arrests took place in several cities, including Toulouse, where extremist gunman Mohamed Merah was shot dead by police last week after a series of cold-blooded shootings that left seven dead, including three Jewish children.
Sarkozy said the arrests targeted “radical Islam” and that the trauma in France after the shootings in Toulouse and nearby Montauban was like that felt in the United States after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks.
Agents from the DCRI domestic intelligence agency and elite police carried out the dawn raids in Toulouse in the southwest, as well as the Paris region, Nantes in the west, Lyon in the southeast and the Provence region.
Among those arrested in the Nantes region was Mohammed Achamlane, the head of a suspected extremist group called Forsane Alizza, sources said. Three Kalashnikovs, a Glock pistol and a grenade were seized from his home.
Three of the 19 suspects arrested were women, police said.
Judicial sources said 17 of those arrested were being held for questioning. In France, suspects in terror-related cases can be held for up to four days without charge.
A senior police source told AFP authorities had up to 100 suspected radicals in their sights and Sarkozy said Friday’s operation was only a start.
“There will be other operations that will continue and will also allow us to expel from our national territory a certain number of people,” said Sarkozy, in the thick of campaigning for an April-May presidential election.
“What must be understood is that the trauma of Montauban and Toulouse is profound for our country, a little — I don’t want to compare the horrors — a little like the trauma that followed in the United States and in New York after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks,” he told Europe 1 radio.
After trailing Socialist candidate Francois Hollande for months in the polls, Sarkozy has jumped ahead in first-round voter intentions and seen his support rise in the wake of the attacks.
Generally seen as stronger on security than Hollande, Sarkozy is keen to make law and order a key issue in a campaign that has so far been dominated by the economy, jobs and spending power, where the Socialist is stronger.
The latest poll by CSA released Wednesday said 30 percent of voters would pick Sarkozy and 26 percent would go for Hollande in the April 22 first round. But all polls still predict Hollande winning the May 6 second round.
Some of Sarkozy’s opponents branded the arrests a public relations stunt, with Steeve Briois, the general secretary of the far-right National Front, calling the raids “an electoral manoeuvre”.
“The ‘big haul’ made overnight by the DCRI and the RAID — the elite police unit that shot Merah — doesn’t fool anyone,” he said in a statement.
Horror
“Waiting for the horror of the Toulouse killings to start taking action shows the cynicism and opportunism of Nicolas Sarkozy.”
But Interior Minister Claude Gueant said: “These are people who on the web... claimed support for a radical extremist ideology, for an ideology of combat.”
The arrests came a day after the body of Merah, who was shot dead by a RAID sniper on March 22 at the end of a 32-hour siege at his flat in Toulouse, was buried in the city under heavy police guard.
The 23-year-old had shot dead three soldiers, and three children and a teacher at a Jewish school, in a killing spree this month that shocked the country.
On Thursday, France banned four Muslim preachers from entering the country for a conference of the Union of Islamic Organisations in France (UOIF), citing their “calls for hatred and violence”.
The ban applies to Saudi clerics Ayed Bin Abdallah al-Qarni and Abdallah Basfar, Egyptian cleric Safwat al-Hijazi and a former mufti of Jerusalem, Akrama Sabri, who had been due in Paris next month.
National Front presidential candidate Marine Le Pen on Friday called for the conference to be cancelled and the UOIF to be disbanded.
A French court meanwhile has sentenced a 20-year-old man, Mohamed Redha Ghezali, from the same neighbourhood as Merah to three months in prison for praising his crimes, prosecutors in Toulouse said.
Ghezali was convicted Thursday of “provoking racial hatred” and “apology for terrorism” and Toulouse prosecutor Michel Valet said the state would “systematically pursue” anyone expressing support for Merah.
The Depeche du Midi reported that the man, while haranguing a group of police officers, had said: “My mate Mohamed, that’s a real man. It’s too bad he didn’t have time to finish the job.”
Interior Minister Claude Gueant said those arrested had paramilitary-type training although he did not say if they were planning an actual attack.
“These are people who...claimed they were acting for an extremely violent, jihadist and combat ideology,” Gueant told reporters after meeting Muslim associations in Paris.
Television channels showed images of the early morning raids, with agents from the RAID police commando unit and anti-terrorist specialists bashing down doors, smashing windows, and taking suspects away handcuffed and with their faces covered.
Polls showed that more than 70 percent of voters approved of Sarkozy’s handling of the incident, reducing his chief rival, Socialist frontrunner Francois Hollande, to the role of bystander before the two-round election on April 22 and May 6.
Sarkozy’s ratings have inched up — he now stands 1-2 points ahead of Hollande in some polls for the first round but remains 8 points behind his rival in surveys for the run-off.
Dismissed
Gueant dismissed talk that the raids had been carried out in response to suggestions that the intelligence services had failed to monitor and track down Merah quickly enough.
The police source said several of those arrested were believed to be close to the banned radical Islamist group Forsane Alizza (Knights of Pride). Gueant said the group’s leader, Mohammed Achamlane, had been arrested in Nantes.
Founded in 2010, Forsane Alizza came to prominence after calling that year for a boycott of McDonald’s in the central city of Limoges, accusing the US fast food chain of serving Israel.
Achamlane told the daily Liberation in January the group could not exclude launching an armed struggle “if Islamophobia continues to intensify day by day”.
Before the Toulouse attacks, the group was known for provocative demonstrations, such as protests against a French ban on worshippers praying in the streets and a ban on full-face veils.
Gueant banned the group in February, accusing it of preparing its supporters for armed struggle.
Gilles Kepel, political scientist and specialist in Islam, said the group operated more on the internet — preaching extreme views and intimidating but never actually turning to violence.
“It’s a big show, but obviously spreading ideas that can cause problems,” he said.
France’s 5 million strong Muslim minority is the largest in Europe but only a portion — about 10 percent, or the same proportion as among Catholics — are practising, according to Muslim associations.