A planned attack targeting the football events of the 2024 Olympic Games was foiled in Saint-Étienne by the intelligence services, the Interior Ministry announced on Friday.
The Chechen suspect was indicted and imprisoned last week.
He is not the first national of this Caucasian republic to want to carry out an attack on our soil.
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Terrorist threat: France once again on high alert
It is the den of Saint-Etienne football, the Geoffrey-Guichard stadium in Saint-Etienne, which was therefore targeted by a young 18-year-old Chechen in the process of applying for asylum and unknown to the police, the ministry announced on Friday inside. According to the first elements of the investigation, he was actively preparing an attack and had communicated with people affiliated with the Islamic State.
Radicalized young people
Since 2018, several terrorism cases, including three attacks, have involved jihadists in France from Russian republics in the North Caucasus, mainly from Chechnya. The knife attack in the Opera district of the capital in May 2018, the assassination in Yvelines of Samuel Paty in October 2020 and, on October 13, that of Dominique Bernard in Arras (North) are all about common to have been committed by radicalized young people from this region.
“These are young people who arrived in France later and who only knew about the war through the stories told by their parents and through the fact that they were forced to leave Chechnya. They do not find not their place in France, but they do not find it either with the relationship they have with their elders, since they did not experience these wars”, explains Anne Nivat, senior reporter, specialist in the Russian world, in the TF1 video above.
Particularly violent wars. In 1991, Chechnya declared its independence, followed by two wars against Russian forces, tens of thousands of deaths and mass exile to Europe. At the same time, the small Russian republic, a conservative Muslim, adheres to an increasingly radical Islam. Today, between 60,000 and 75,000 Chechens live in France.
We clearly feel that in populations who have suffered a lot and who are in a situation of uprooting, the stakes of manipulation are greater.
Alain Bauer, director of the “defense security” division at the CNAM
In 2018, after the attack in the Opera district, there were many in the streets to mobilize against terrorism. Shamil Albakov, honorary consul of the Chechen Republic, led the procession. “The extremists use all means and in particular our history. The fact that the international community has not sided with us, has not recognized us. He uses this feeling of frustration to say that in all cases , the only possible path is attacks”he analyzes.
The youngest are the most sensitive to these arguments. Some become radicalized. The intelligence services are therefore extremely attentive to this. “We feel that in populations who have suffered a lot and who are in a situation of uprooting, the stakes of manipulation are greater and therefore we are more attentive to it. But this was valid in the 90s at the time of the Algerian civil war We had these phenomena on other populations. assures Alain Bauer, director of the “defense security” center at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts.
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According to this expert, France has improved in analysis and intelligence and therefore better anticipates attacks. According to the Interior Ministry, 50 attacks have been foiled since 2017.
