RIVALRIES AND BLUNDERS HAMPER TERRORIST HUNT
Rivalries between various police services and within the judiciary are hampering the French fight against terrorism.
In September, President Chirac said in blatant contradiction of his Interior Minister that nothing was known about the origin of the terrorist attacks and denounced the "lack of coordination in the combat against terrorism".
Interior Minister Debré angrily expressed his "consternation" about the presidential criticism: "He [Chirac] should never have admitted that he didn't know where the attacks came from", Mr Debré is reported to have said.
However, the presidential avowals did not come as a surprise to anybody. Indeed, rivalries between the plethora of magistrates, special police and gendarmerie units as well as intelligence services involved in one way or the other in the anti-terrorist hunt appeared from the very beginning. Thus, the well-informed satirical Paris weekly, Le Canard Enchaîné, revealed that one of the leading investigating judges (juge d'instruction) in the St Michel bombing travelled to Stockholm to seek the arrest of the suspected Algerian, A.D., without informing the office of public prosecution nor Prime Minister Juppé or Justice Minister Toubon. As for the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST: the French internal secret service), it did not find it necessary to inform the Police Judiciaire (PJ: the police unit in charge of criminal investigations) of the (illegal) presence of DST officers on Swedish soil. In its turn, the PJ "forgot" for several days to inform the other police and security services of its discovery of the finger-prints identifying Kelkal as a main suspect in the failed TGV bombing.
According to the Canard, an "apalling atmosphere" characterises the meetings of the various police and secret service chiefs "cooperating" in UclAT, the coordination unit for the fight against terrorism.
Tensions appeared also between the two main French police services, the Police Nationale (under the Interior Ministry) and the Gendarmerie (under the Ministry of Defense). Thus, a high-ranking police officer in Lyons commented on the shooting of Kelkal by the Gendarmerie-unit EPIGN: "The paratroopers of the Gendarmerie wanted to make war, just as they are used to in Ouvéa [New-Caledonia]... Their job is to make war, so they went hunting...'Finish him! off'. To say so, is very grave, not to mention that Kelkal was armed only with a 7.65 [pistol]".
Following a number of embarrassing leaks to the media (resulting among other things in TV crews appearing at operations before the police), Interior Minister Debré severely warned police officers against violations of the confidentiality of the investigation. Ever since, some investigators are voicing suspicion that they are being eaves-dropped by rival police services. An unnamed member of the national police headquarters quoted in the Figaro, complained that "this has never happened before, not even during the Algerian war".
When military troops mobilised under Vigipirate were used in Strasbourg for riot control purposes, the General Union of Polices denounced the "anti-republican use" of the army. In late October, a group of high-ranking magistrates struck an oblique blow against the Government, certain judges and the police. In an article published in le Monde under the pseudonym "Cicero", the magistrates denounced a "civilian and military mobilisation not seen since the Algerian war" and the "suspicion across the board of islamic fundamentalists". The "anti-terrorist" investigating judges are accused of having "jailed 160 Muslims" as "hostages of the Republic", in an attempt "to fight back enemies of whom nobody knows who they are". The magistrates further contend that "the special relations of certain investigating judges with certain members of the police hierarchy permanently short-circuit the public prosecutor". Commenting on the investigating "trio" made of the office of public prosecution, the investigating judges and the police, the magistrates conclude: "There is one pilot too many in the plane. It is not the policeman".
Sources: 14.9.95; Canard Enchâiné, 13.9.95,4.10.95; Humanité, 23.10.95,26.10.95; Le Monde, 9.9.95,23.10.95; Figaro, 14.9.95.