\nThe government of France considers that the rights of the victims are the priority<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
When Darmanin ran the interior ministry, his chief of staff was Alexandre Brug\u00e8re. He has been the prefect for western Paris since November last year and in that time he has been relentless in prioritising \u2018the deportation of undocumented foreigners who disturb public order\u2019.<\/p>\n
Brug\u00e8re has this year expelled 370 undesirables, a 61 per cent increase on the same period in 2024. Some are petty criminals or members of drug cartels but most are radical Islamists. Last month Brug\u00e8re expelled four such individuals, including a Syrian who had his refugee status revoked after expressing support for the Islamic State. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Brug\u00e8re has promised to remain \u2018extremely firm in the fight against Islamism\u2019, conscious of the gravity of the threat posed by extremism. This was underlined earlier this year by C\u00e9line Berthon, the head of DGSI, France\u2019s equivalent of MI5. \u2018Our biggest challenge today is online radicalization,\u2019 she said in an interview in March, explaining how individuals \u2018can be influenced or controlled from outside, particularly by terrorist organizations present either in Syria and Iraq for the Islamic State, or in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the Islamic State in Khorasan.\u2019<\/p>\n
A similar warning was issued by MI5 Director General Ken McCallum last October. \u2018We\u2019re also seeing far too many cases where very young people are being drawn into poisonous online extremism,\u2019 said McCallum in a speech from the Counter Terrorism Operations Centre. The division of MI5\u2019s counter-terrorist work, he added, was \u2018roughly 75 per cent Islamist extremist, 25 per cent extreme right-wing terrorism\u2019.<\/p>\n
Doubtless MI5 is working as tirelessly as its French counterpart to monitor the Islamic extremists, but what is being done by the government? If Labour has deported any Islamic extremists flagged by MI5 they haven\u2019t been made public, which is perhaps surprising given the Prime Minister\u2019s oft-mentioned determination to clamp down on the extreme right.<\/p>\n
Last week, it was announced that members of the government\u2019s national security and online information team (NSOIT) have been tracking people who make critical comments online about migrant hotels and policing standards. It is the same team deployed during the Covid Pandemic to keep tabs on anti-lockdown campaigners.<\/p>\n
While Labour appears less ardent in its monitoring of Islamic extremism, the Tories can\u2019t claim to have done a great job either during their time in office. In April 2024 there was a pledge to introduce legislation to \u2018protect the public from\u2026foreign nationals who are sowing division and spreading hate in communities, potentially having them removed from the country.\u2019<\/p>\n
Why so long? In 2017 \u2013 after seven years of Tory governance \u2013 it was reported that since 2004 Britain had deported 11 extremists; in the same period France had expelled 120.<\/p>\n
The Conservatives\u2019 promise to finally act came to naught; three months later, they were out of office, replaced by a government led by Keir Starmer. This is the same Keir Starmer who, as a barrister in 2008, represented the Palestinian-born Abu Qatada as he fought a deportation order to Jordan where he was wanted on charges of terrorism. Among Qatada\u2019s many incendiary declarations was a 1999 fatwa \u2018authorising the killing of Jews, including Jewish children\u2019.<\/p>\n
Often described as Osama bin Laden\u2019s \u2018ambassador in Europe, Qatada sought to remain in Britain because \u2013 as Starmer told the judge \u2013 \u2018deportation and the revocation of refugee status both interfere with domestic civil rights\u2019. The judge dismissed Starmer\u2019s argument as \u2018fallacious\u2019 but it took another five years before the government overcame the Human Rights lawyers and finally deported Qatada.<\/p>\n
Starmer\u2019s role in defending Abu Qatada was a line of attack for Rishi Sunak in last year\u2019s televised election debates. The morning after the debate, the Labour party issued a statement in which they said: \u2018In this country, everyone is entitled to a defence, which means lawyers cannot choose who they work for.\u2019<\/p>\n
This line of argument was addressed by Bruno Retailleau in October last year, a month after he was appointed Minister of the Interior. \u2018In the face of disorder, we must find the right balance between protecting individual freedoms and protecting society,\u2019 he said. He then singled out the European Court of Human Rights, which had recently prevented France from deporting an Islamist and said in such a case \u2018the balance is no longer right, as we are protecting the rights of dangerous individuals more than those of the victims\u2019.<\/p>\n
Retailleau and the government of France consider that the rights of the victims are the priority and that dangerous individuals must be deported.\u00a0This doesn\u2019t appear to be the priority of the British government.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"So far this year France has deported 64 individuals from its database of radical Islamists. More are planned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-320008","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114976598897097622","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}