The Spies of Terrorseries broadcast Tuesday November 12, on the eve of the commemorations of the November 13 attacks, recounts the hunt for terrorists. These attacks claimed by the Islamic State group caused the death of 130 people in 2015 at the Bataclan, the Stade de France and on several café terraces. This realistic and dry series by Franck Philippon retraces in four episodes the investigation of the French security services, such as the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) and the Directorate of External Security (DGSE), supported by other services which worked in the shadows. The series is based on the investigative book by journalist specializing in anti-terrorism Matthieu Suc, The Spies of Terror.
“Telling it from the perspective of the service people and how they tracked down the sponsors, explains Franck Philippon, there was some pretty incredible material in his book“. “There was a way to do something very cathartic for the general public“, according to him, that is to say to show that there was real efficiency in the work of the services in the year which followed and that, for the general public, “it was a way of entering the other side of the mirror, of seeing how anti-terrorism works, how complicated it is, how zero risk does not exist“. The work that the services have done has been very effective and beyond all the sometimes somewhat reductive political debates that there can be on anti-terrorism, Franck Philippon finds that there is an educational virtue and almost a bit of a citizen in the series “We wanted to say to the viewer, who is also a citizen: look at how things are going and form your opinion, but we are still well protected in our country”.
“We had to add fiction to be sure that at no time what we were saying could help identify the informant.”
The series is based “at 80 90%“on real facts, confirms Franck Philippon, but we still had to resort to fiction for security reasons.”The character of Saïd, who will become a source under the code name of Minotaur, is inspired by several sources that have existed“, he confides. “We deliberately put filters, none of the places or facts are totally true for the protect, he explains, otherwise we risked giving information that could have allowed him to be identified to people who would like to harm him.“, concludes Franck Philippon.
France
