Paris Attack Suspects Would Have Been Hard To Track

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Both of the Kouachi brothers had been known to authorities before Wednesday's attack. In 2005, Charif Kouachi had been arrested and served prison time for trying to join extremist fighters in Iraq. He was part of a terrorist cell called the Buttes-Chaumont network, started by a charismatic janitor with ties to North African militants. Jean-Charles Brisard is Paris-based security and terrorism analyst. He spoke to us earlier about that group.

JEAN-CHARLES BRISARD: The Buttes-Chaumont cell in the 19 Square Terrace was a foreign fighters facilitating network designed to recruit and make individuals travel to the conflict zone in Iraq at the time of the first war in Iraq in 2004 and 2005. And the cell members were arrested in 2005.

SIEGEL: Mr. Brisard, the obvious question is - these people were not only known to police, they were known to journalists. They'd been figures pretty well known for going on 10 years. Were they either under adequate surveillance or had they served adequately long sentences for what they'd done? Why were they able to do what they did?

BRISARD: Most of these individuals were condemned and they served a term. So there was nothing, after they were jailed, that we could do against them judicially. Now, after they served their terms, they were put under surveillance. But to put someone under surveillance you need two things. First, you need a good reason, evidence or information leading you to believe that an individual could turn himself radicalized or could become involved in a violent act. It was not the case at the time. And the second thing - you need resources. The problem is to follow one single man on a 24-hour basis, you need 25 agents. Today, we're facing an unprecedented terrorist threat in France, due to the fact that more than 1,200 French citizens have traveled, since 2012, to the Syrian and Iraqi border in the conflict zone.

SIEGEL: Do you think that a great many of the French citizens who have either gone to Iraq or Syria or perhaps, as appears to have been the case here, gone to Yemen to be trained? Do you think that a great many of them are organized into small cells, or are these merely random combinations of acquaintances and people who served in jail together?

BRISARD: You have, really, a combination of both threats. In this particular case in France today, we had people that were already hard-lined, convicted several times already for some of them. And so they were basically the conventional terrorist that we knew in the years between 1980 and 2000. And now we have a new situation with the returnings from the conflict in Syria and Iraq acting more randomly, more in an individual way. We've seen that active, for example, in Australia, in Canada or in the United States. This is a totally different threat.

SIEGEL: Just one other question, Mr. Brisard. How do you understand the appeal of this kind of radical Islam to someone like Charif Kouachi, born in France, raised there and ultimately killed by police for an act of terror? What was the attraction do you think?

BRISARD: We have individuals in France - and this is due to the social and economy crisis - we have individuals in the crisis of identity. Religion is a pretext. It's attractive because it makes you believe that you can become someone, become a fighter, become known, become a hero. This is, unfortunately, something that is becoming attractive to small parts of the population, but still a larger number than what we've ever experienced in the past.

SIEGEL: Jean-Charles Brisard, thank you very much for talking with us today.

BRISARD: Thank you.

SIEGEL: Mr. Brisard is based in Paris where he is a consultant and an expert on terrorism and security. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.