Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau affirms that the terrorist threat is still present on French soil while nine attacks have been foiled in 2024. A threat which now comes mainly from within, with increasingly young aspirants.
“The threat is still there.” As France commemorates the attacks of January 2015, the first in a long series on the territory, Bruno Retailleau, the Minister of the Interior, launches a call for vigilance. In a telegram consulted by BFMTV, the tenant of Place Beauvau asked the prefects to maintain “maximum vigilance and to strengthen security measures throughout the territory during large festive, cultural and sporting gatherings.”
On March 24, France returned to the “emergency attack” level of the Vigipirate plan. A decision taken the day after the attack perpetrated in Moscow against a concert hall, which left 145 dead, and claimed by the Islamic State group. This state of alert on the national territory was maintained while the country hosted the Olympic and Paralympic Games during the summer.
“Emergency attack”: what does it change?
Nine attacks foiled in 2024
In total, in 2024, nine attacks were foiled, the highest number since 2017. Three targeted the Olympic Games. However, the threat is less visible. “2024 is the first year where there have been no deaths from Islamist terrorism in France, however we thwart attacks every three months on average,” notes Guillaume Farde, security consultant for BFMTV. “We don’t see people dying but we still have active and threatening terrorist organizations.”
“We know that terrorism is a risk which remains significant in our societies and which requires no relaxation and collective vigilance,” declared Emmanuel Macron on Monday during the conference with ambassadors. “There must be no respite in the fight against terrorism.”
For Bruno Retailleau, this Tuesday on RTL, “the breeding ground for this threat is Islamism”. Last September, the anti-terrorism prosecutor confirmed the reality of the jihadist threat on French soil. “This represents approximately 80% of the procedures opened by my prosecution,” explained Olivier Christen on France Info. “In the first half of 2024, we have approximately three times as many procedures relating to jihadist disputes than there were over the same period in 2023.”
How can we explain this resurgence of Islamist activities? “Daesh has not disappeared and spreads a lot of propaganda which has an impact on the population,” said the prosecutor.
Endogenous threat
The great transformation of the terrorist threat in recent years is that it is now mainly endogenous, that is to say coming from within the territory. “The projected threat, that is to say what we experienced at the Bataclan, has more or less disappeared. It is a threat which has weakened since the disappearance of the Daesh sanctuary in Syria”, estimates on BFMTV Michaël Prazan, director and writer, author of A history of terrorism published by Flammarion.
“The endogenous threat comes from people who go under intelligence radar, isolated but who respond to calls made on the social networks of Daesh, Al-Qaeda, or other terrorist groups or who are indoctrinated by the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood”, continues Michaël Prazan. “This is what happened in Germany, in New Orleans.”
“If the year 2015 was marked by a commando logic, projected from the Iraqi-Syrian zone, the Islamic State is today more distinguished by its capacity to inspire violent action projects among our nationals,” confirmed in December 2024 with the AFP the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI). This was particularly the case during the assassination, in 2023, of Dominique Bernard, this teacher killed by a student of Russian origin who arrived in France with his family in 2008.
The fear of those leaving prison
This attack also illustrates another reality: that of increasingly young attackers, radicalized on social networks. Currently, 22,000 people are registered with the FSPRT, the Report Processing File for the prevention of terrorist radicalization. 5,000 files are active and 1,000 people are particularly followed. This was the case of the young man suspected of having murdered Dominique Bernard. “You can have close monitoring, at certain moments you can have individuals who take action,” notes Guillaume Farde.
The terrorist threat would also be reinforced by the question of those leaving prison, these individuals convicted from 2015 for acts linked to terrorism. “The more time passes, the more prisoners sentenced to the longest sentences and therefore for the most serious and potentially the most dangerous offenses leave,” analyzes the BFMTV security consultant.
A threat characterized by the attack of December 2, 2023 on the Bir-Hakeim bridge, in Paris, when Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, a naturalized Iranian and already convicted for a planned terrorist attack, took action, killing a person.
The return of the external threat?
In an interview with Parisianthe Minister of the Interior estimates that these individuals who leave prison – there will be 60 in 2025 – and who “are subject to individual surveillance measures” should also be subject to “firm judicial security measures, in detention centers”.
“The question of security detention with regard to people [radicalisés] the most dangerous arises”, agreed on France Info François Molins, the former Paris prosecutor and face of the fight against terrorism during the wave of attacks in 2015 and 2016. The retired magistrate believes that he ” must find instruments which are adapted to the most dangerous cases”.
The fact remains that if the major concern remains this endogenous threat, the authorities call for caution regarding the international context. Questioned this Tuesday morning on LCI, the Paris police prefect, Laurent Nuñez, former Secretary of State to the Minister of the Interior and former national coordinator of intelligence and the fight against terrorism, believes that “with geopolitical developments, we remain cautious with what is happening in Syria, in Afghanistan”, while the regime of Bashar al-Assad has just been overthrown by an Islamist group, and the Taliban are back in power in Afghanistan since 2021.
