France steps up plans to deal with Islamic radicalisation from the Caucasus

France will begin cracking down on foreigners flagged for radicalisation following the stabbing death of a teacher by a young man from the Russian republic of Ingushetia, who was already under surveillance.

French soldiers from Operation Sentinelle stand in front of the Gambetta-Carnot school as French students and teachers pay tribute to French teacher Dominique Bernard who was killed in a knife attack, in Arras, northern France, October 16, 2023. REUTERS - PASCAL ROSSIGNOL

Security services are also be being asked how step up surveillance of young people from the North Caucasus, who have been under scrutiny for over twenty years.

In a circular published earlier on Monday, the Interior Ministry tasked prefects – state representatives in France’s departments – to convene meetings of security and police forces as of Tuesday to scrutinise every person who has been flagged for radicalisation or association with potential terrorists, and move towards deporting those who are in France illegally.

The circular comes after President Emmanuel Macron called for security services to be “intractable” on deporting radicalised foreigners, following the stabbing death of teacher Dominique Bernard in Arras, by Mohammed Mogouchkov, a 20-year-old who arrived in France in 2008 with his family from the Muslim-majority Russian region of Ingushetia.

He is was one of the 20,120 people on France's FSPRT list of people flagged for radicalisation and terrorism, according to Interior Minister Gerard Darmanin, who gave figures following a security meeting with the President on Monday.

Of those on the list, 1,411 are foreigners, and only 489 are still in France, most of whom are in detention or under house arrest, according to Interior Ministry.

Of the 193 illegal immigrants left, “we have decided to look at each one, case by case, to see who needs more effective surveillance… in order to accelerate the procedures and move towards their deportation," said Darmanin.

Who can be legally deported?

But Mogouchkov, who has Russian citizenship, cannot be legally deported, as he arrived in France before the age of 13.

His father was deported in 2018 for radicalisation, and his older brother is serving a five-year prison term for advocating terrorism and having been involved in foiled attack on the Elysée palace in 2014.

Mogouchkov was under surveillance for the last few weeks and had been stopped by police the day before the murder, but there was no proof that he would commit a crime that would have allowed him to be arrested.

There was no “failure of the intelligence services”, Darmanin said on Saturday.

"You cannot arrest everyone because they are in a radicalised family,” former anti-terrorism Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière told RFI.

Intelligence services had a big dossier on Mogouchkov, but there was “not enough to arrest him, so we cannot talk about breaches of security”.

Radicalisation from Caucasus

Mogouchkov is the latest in a string of people involved in terrorist attacks in France since 2018 who come from the Muslim-majority parts of the Caucasus.

Bruguière, who investigated Chechen jihadist groups in the mid 2000s, says the phenomenon “is not new”.

According to a 2020 security memo from France’s DGSI intelligence agency that was seen by the Le Monde daily, since Chechen-born Khamzat Azimov stabbed to death a young man and injured several others in an attack in Paris in 2018 and Abdoullakh Anzorov's beheading of teacher Samuel Paty in 2020, six attacks and suspected attacks implicated “actors of Chechen origin in jihadists projects on the national territory.”

When presenting the circular on Monday, Darmanin called for prefects to consider ways to specifically track “young men from the Caucuses, in the 16-25 year old age bracket.”

History of war and jihad

People from the Muslim-majority parts of the Caucuses have been under scrutiny in France for nearly twenty years, since they started arriving during and after the two Chechen independence wars, in 1994-1996 and 1999-2009.

Between 20,000 to 40,000 people from the North Caucuses live in France, but the DGSI report says they represented a disproportionate number of those who left to join the Islamic State armed group in Syria starting in 2012.

This came out of the Chechen independence movement, which shifted from being an opposition to Russian power “to a more universal dimension" of global jihad, the memo said.

Parts of the diaspora were radicalised following the declaration in 2007 by Dokka Oumarov of the Islamic Emirate of the Caucasus. The movement spilled over into neighbouring Dagestan, Ossetia and Ingushetia.

When Oumarov died in 2013, those who had been radicalised were drawn to the jihadist fight in Syria and Iraq.

“Despite it’s small demographic size in France, the North Caucasian community is overrepresented in the French jihadist contingent,” the DGSI said, adding that those Chechens who stayed in France “are often represented in violent projects”.

What can France do?

Those who have staged or planned attacks in France tend to be young and have spent most of their lives in France, with a strong grasp of the French language, seemingly better integrated than their parents, said the memo.

The challenge for French authorities is how to address the radicalisation and the real and potential danger it poses, coming from people who have legal rights to live in France.

Darmanin said several people will have their residence permits removed, which will render them illegal and therefore able to be deported.

And the immigration bill the government will soon table for debate in the Senate will have provisions that could make it easier to strip citizenship rights from suspected and convicted terrorists.