Paris: Police led pre-dawn raids across France on Saturday in a crackdown against suspected Islamist extremists, arresting 19 people and carting off automatic rifles and other guns in authorities’ latest response to a wave of terrorism that has shaken the country.
President Nicolas Sarkozy, intent on showing an all-out fight against terrorism as his re-election contest nears, promised more such raids as his conservative government responds to a spate of shootings in southern France by a radical Islamist that left seven people dead and two wounded.
Interior Minister Claude Gueant said there was “no known link” between those detained Friday and Mohamed Merah, the 23-year-old Frenchman who claimed responsibility for the killings in Toulouse and Montauban. Merah was killed in a shootout with police after a 32-hour standoff last week.
The raids in or near the cities of Toulouse, Lyon, Marseille, Paris and Nantes involved the arrest of members of a radical Islamist group known as Forsane Alizza – the Knights of Pride – that was banned last month. Gueant said several assault rifles and other guns were seized.
The roundup was part of a judicial operation ordered by France’s powerful anti-terrorism judges, who opened an investigation into the group in October. Sarkozy gave no details about the reasons for the arrests.
“It’s in connection with a form of Islamist radicalism,” he said on Europe-1 radio. warning of more operations ahead aimed at expelling from France “a certain number of people who have no reason to be here.”
But Philippe Missamou, a lawyer for Forsane Alizza, said those arrested in the sweep all were French citizens, raising questions about where Sarkozy might have such suspects sent. “This is a purely political maneuver … linked to the presidential election,” Missamou said of the arrests.
Most French media coverage of the relatively unknown group has focused on its street demonstrations in favor of the right of Muslim women to wear face-covering veils – a practice that France banned last year.
“In any case, the early signs suggest the operation was rather well executed — involving many different areas simultaneously and netting people who were in contact with each other,” she said. (AP)