FRANCE-SHOOTING/SECURITY French Defence Minister welcomes extra soldiers brought in to reinforce Paris security

Record ID: 324362

  • Title: FRANCE-SHOOTING/SECURITY French Defence Minister welcomes extra soldiers brought in to reinforce Paris security
  • Date: 15th January 2015
  • Summary: VERSAILLES, FRANCE (JANUARY 15, 2015) (REUTERS) SOLDIERS IN LINE VARIOUS OF SOLDIERS SINGING FRENCH NATIONAL ANTHEM
  • Embargoed: 30th January 2015 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: France
  • Country: France
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAEUK7359887O058IKWIOAYOOW7
  • Story Text: French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian welcomed additional troops brought into Paris on Thursday (January 15) to re-inforce security in the wake of deadly attacks by Islamist gunmen in the French capital.
    Last week, 17 people were killed in three days of violence that began with an attack on the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly and ended with dual sieges at a print works outside Paris and a kosher supermarket.
    Le Drian said extra forces would be deployed outside what he called "sensitive areas, be it places of worship, schools, public places".
    The Defence Ministry said on Wednesday night that 10,500 military had been deployed on home soil. In the capital, security outside media outlets, transport hubs, synagogues and Jewish schools had been beefed up.
    The defence minister said the deployment had been done with exceptional speed.
    "The reinforcement was done with exceptional rapidity," Le Drian said. "We did it in three days," he added.
    Also in France, which tightened its anti-terrorism laws last year, the government will next week put forward a draft law that would make intelligence gathering and monitoring easier, government spokesman Stephane Le Foll said.
    It would allow police to place tracking devices under suspects' cars, gain access to their computers and digital information as well as monitor them on Skype or put microphones and cameras in places where they are likely to go.
    The two brothers, Said and Cherif Kouachi, who carried out the Charlie Hebdo attack were both on a U.S. database of terrorism suspects, but French police had scaled back their monitoring of them in the last few years.
    Prime Minister Manuel Valls says the staff of the DGSI domestic intelligence service will be increased in addition to more than 400 new hires already planned.
    Valls also wants a controversial pilot programme isolating prison inmates linked to radical Islam to be extended. France's overcrowded prisons have proven a fertile breeding ground for young Muslims to become radicalised.
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