Red Alerts

A website with the humorous name of Sheik Yer'mami posted this on September 11, and provided the image (left):

The risk of a terrorist attack on French soil has never been higher, the head of the country’s counterespionage agency said in an interview released on Saturday.

Bernard Squarcini told Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper that France’s history as a colonial master in North Africa, its military presence in Afghanistan and a proposal aimed at banning full-covering face veils in public all make the country a prime target for certain radical Islamist groups.

Read more.

H/T: Anonymous reader.

A brief from Le Figaro dated September 18, re-iterates the above information and emphasizes that the level of threat is very serious:

(...) A week ago in the Journal du Dimanche (JDD), the head of the DCRI (similar to our FBI) had affirmed that the threat of an attack on French soil "had never been so great and that all indicators are on red alert". Words that were confirmed on Thursday by Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux who said that the "threat has really become worse these past few days and hours."

In an article in Le Monde, Bernard Squarcini was formal: "All signals are red. France is under a major terrorist threat", citing as proof the kidnapping on Friday of five Frenchmen in northern Niger, and the "corroborating information that has reached us."

With the adoption, on September 14, of a law forbidding the Islamic burka in public areas, the participation by France in Afghanistan, the attack in July by a French commando on an al-Qaida base in AQIM (al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb) that caused seven deaths among the jihadists, there is no want of complaints by Muslim extremists against Paris. After the raid in the Sahara that failed to liberate the hostage Michel Germaneau, AQIM had sworn vengeance in a communiqué: "To the enemy of Allah, Sarkozy, I say: you missed an opportunity and opened the door of horror for yourself and your country."

Note: See Wikipedia (English) for more on AQIM.

French anti-terrorist officials are also concerned about the recent return to France and Europe of young European volunteers who trained and fought in the Pakistani-Afghan zone.

Reuters has this English-language version of the story of the kidnapping.