Presidential campaign rocked by thwarted terrorist attack
Print Edition
EXTREMISM concerns shook France’s presidential campaign yesterday as authorities announced arrests in what they said was a thwarted attack and candidates urged tougher counterterrorism efforts for a country already under a state of emergency.
While national security has been a strong theme in the campaign, far-right candidate Marine Le Pen hardened her tone on foreign extremists and border controls in the wake of the arrests that came days before the first round of voting.
Centrist Emmanuel Macron called for national unity and stronger intelligence. Le Pen and Macron are among four leading candidates seen as most likely to progress from Sunday’s first round and reach the May 7 runoff between the top two.
As the government prepared to flood streets with more than 50,000 police and soldiers to safeguard the ballot, Interior Minister Matthias Fekl said police thwarted an imminent “terror attack,” arresting two men in the southern port city of Marseille.
Both are suspected Islamic radicals, according to the Paris prosecutors’ office. It said police seized guns and explosives of a type previously used in attacks in France and Belgium inspired by the Islamic State group.
Fekl said the two French men, one born in 1987 and the other in 1993, “intended to commit an attack on French soil in the very short term, which is to say in coming days.”
Macron’s campaign team said authorities earlier provided a photograph of the suspects to his security detail.
Fekl gave no details about potential targets or motives, and it was unclear whether the attack could have targeted a campaign event.
The presidential election is being watched as a bellwether for global populist sentiment, in large part because of Le Pen’s nationalist, anti-immigration positions.
Before the arrests were announced, Le Pen said on RTL radio that she would expel foreign extremists and draft army reservists to close France’s borders as soon as she takes office. “We cannot fight the terrorism that weighs on our country without controlling our borders,” she said.
With the measures she wants to put in place, she said, the three men who carried out the January 2015 attacks against the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a kosher supermarket would never have obtained French citizenship.
Macron called the arrests a reminder that “the terrorist threat remains very high,” and reiterated calls for pressure on Internet companies to better monitor extremism online.
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