Country Report on Terrorism 2023 - Chapter 1 - France

Overview:  France is a key partner of the United States in the global fight against terrorism. Bilateral U.S.-France CT cooperation is strong.  The terrorist threat in France remained “very high” and was elevated from October through year’s end to its highest level, “Emergency Attack,” following a terrorist attack that killed a teacher in the northern city of Arras.  Security services are concerned about “Islamist terrorism” and “ultra right” groups and consider endogenous attacks, by lone-actor and small “radicalized” cells tied to accelerationist and conspiratorial insurrectionist movements, to pose the most significant REMVE threat.  Following months of violent demonstrations throughout France between January and June over retirement reforms, France’s General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI, an FBI equivalent), warned on July 11 of the “very worrying resurgence” of “far-right violence” in 2023.  The government additionally noted concern about the threat posed by the recent events in Israel and Gaza.  The National Liberation Front of Corsica continued to pose a terrorist threat.  French law enforcement and intelligence agencies have thwarted at least 73 attacks since 2013 and 43 since 2017.  The Minister of Interior noted that one terrorist attack has been thwarted every month-and-a-half since he took office in 2017, 1,500 people have been arrested for supporting terrorism, and 6,500 people are put under surveillance per year.

2023 Terrorist Incidents:  At least a dozen attacks occurred or were thwarted in 2023, including the following:

• On October 12, one teacher was killed and two other individuals seriously injured in a knife attack at a high school in Arras.  According to media reports, a 20-year-old alumnus originally from Russia entered the school shouting, “Allahu Akbar.”
• On December 2 a French national born in 1997 to Iranian parents killed a German tourist and injured two near the Eiffel Tower in Paris.  The assailant reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIS in a video recorded beforehand and had previously served four years in prison for planning the 2016 terrorist attack in La Défense – Paris’ business district.  According to Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, the assailant told police he was angry about the situation in Gaza and the fact that “so many Muslims are dying in Afghanistan and in Palestine,” and he accused France of being “an accomplice to what Israel is doing” in Gaza.

Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security:  The cabinet council approved the nomination of Pascal Mailhos as new National Intelligence and Counterterrorism Coordinator on January 11.  On December 20 the cabinet council approved the nominations of the new heads of France’s domestic and foreign intelligence services.  Nicolas Lerner replaced Bernard Emié as the new head of France’s CIA-equivalent General Directorate for External Security.  Céline Berthon replaced Lerner at the head of the DGSI.

The Ministry of Interior announced in October that the government deployed 7,000 military personnel throughout the country to patrol vulnerable sites under Operation Sentinelle, up from 3,000 in 2021.

In July the Government of France stated that it would end group repatriation operations from northeast Syria, noting: “All the mothers who expressed the wish to leave Syria had been repatriated.”  France has repatriated 169 children and 57 adult women since 2019 but has declined to repatriate French nationals detained as FTFs.  About 120 displaced and 70 detained French nationals remain in northeast Syria.

High-profile terrorist cases in the judicial system included the following:

• On February 17 the Paris Criminal Court cleared nine of the 13 members of “far right” group “Barjols” (created on Facebook in 2017) who were accused of planning violent attacks against President Macron, mosques, and migrant communities in 2017 and 2018.
• In March the Paris Special Criminal Court sentenced Amandine Le Coz, a repatriated female from- Syria, to 10 years in prison.  Le Coz was convicted of associating with terrorists, based on her joining ISIS with her husband in 2014, marrying another combatant after divorcing her first husband, and recruiting others to support ISIS-related causes in Syria.  The same court condemned ISIS midwife Douha Mounib to 12 years in prison for associating with a terrorist group after she joined ISIS in Syria for two stays between 2013 and 2017.
• Five men ages 17 to 39 received prison sentences ranging from 5 to 15 years on April 20 for planning a terrorist attack near the Élysée Palace in 2019.
• On April 21 the Paris Special Criminal Court found guilty and sentenced, in absentia, Lebanese Canadian academic Hassan Diab, to life in prison for the 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue that killed four persons.
• On June 16 the Paris Special Criminal Court sentenced Christian Ganczarski to a term of 20 years’ imprisonment for an attempted murder of a prison guard in connection with a terrorist enterprise.

France is a member of the U.S. Visa Waiver Program, which requires broad CT partnership, including routine information sharing and border screening cooperation.

Countering the Financing of Terrorism:  France is a member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), and its Financial Intelligence Unit, the Intelligence Processing and Action Against Illicit Financial Networks Unit (Tracfin), is a member of the Egmont Group.  Following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, Tracfin joined the Counterterrorist Financing Taskforce-Israel, which aims to strengthen efforts to disrupt the international money flows to Hamas and support global antiterrorism efforts through the coordination of financial intelligence and information sharing.  In December, France hosted an international meeting on combating Hamas that focused on the group’s online terrorist content and financing.

Countering Violent Extremism:  As part of its efforts to counter “Islamist separatism,” the French government announced it would end foreign government funding of imams by 2024, replacing this program with imams trained within France.  A senior Islamic cleric warned that inadequate training could increase “radicalization” risks, noting that, previously, no detached imam was considered radical by French authorities, in contrast to some homegrown imams.  France is a donor to the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund.

International and Regional Cooperation:  France is a founding member of the Global Counterterrorism Forum and is active on the UN Security Council ISIL and al-Qa’ida Sanctions Committee.  France convened an international conference on December 13 with several partner governments to counter Hamas financing and propaganda, in response to the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel.