By Layli Foroudi and Juliette Jabkhiro
PARIS (Reuters) – The first time French police informed the Chechen refugee that he was prohibited from leaving the northeastern city of Strasbourg and must check in with them daily, he did not think it worth contesting the order.
France was in the midst of a massive security operation for the summer Olympic Games, he explained, and he did not think authorities would listen to someone identified as a potential threat because of interactions with people identified as ‘pro-Jihadist.’
But when the Ministry of Interior extended the order in late August to help protect a famed Christmas market that was the target of a deadly attack in 2018, the refugee, known to friends as Khaled, appealed to the city’s administrative court.
A panel of judges concluded the measures were “disproportionate”, saying in an Oct. 3 decision seen by Reuters that he has no criminal record and was not under investigation for any crime.
While they kept in place a prohibition on attending the Strasbourg Christmas market, they lifted the other measures. But the ruling came too late for the 20-year-old to enrol in a college where he was due to start a cybersecurity course in September, according to evidence submitted by his lawyer.
“I lost my place. This year has gone to waste,” Khaled told Reuters, speaking on condition that he be identified by the nickname, because he fears his academic and career aspirations would be derailed if it becomes known he is being monitored by police.
Friday’s deadly car-ramming attack at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg has prompted renewed scrutiny in a number of European countries of security arrangements for the seasonal markets, which draw large crowds.
But the French interior ministry’s broad use of powers introduced under a 2017 anti-terror law to strictly limit the movements of individuals deemed a serious security threat was already drawing criticism from some lawyers and human rights activists before the attack.
At least 547 people were placed under an “individual measure of administrative control and surveillance” for the Paris Olympics, according to a parliamentary report published on Dec. 11, even though some, like Khaled, had never faced criminal charges.
Now, some lawyers and activists are concerned that the wider use of these measures, known by the French acronym MICAS, could become the norm for other major public events.
The interior ministry, which is in charge of police, and the local authority for the Bas-Rhin region, which includes Strasbourg, did not answer questions about those targeted because of the Christmas market.
Reuters has identified at least 12 cases, based on court documents, interviews with lawyers and one of the people concerned. At least 10 had no terror-related convictions, although one person had been barred from the market before. Reuters could not immediately determine those details for the other two.
In the first five years after the anti-terror law took effect on Nov. 1, 2017, the number of MICAS orders issued to people for any reason in Bas-Rhin did not exceed seven in any 12-month period, according to figures provided by the interior ministry to parliament.
Courts nationally have cancelled or suspended at least 55 of this year’s Olympics and Christmas market-related orders, according to the December parliamentary report and a Reuters review of appeals filed with the Strasbourg court.
“The Olympics were a MICAS free-for-all, and so now I have the impression that the interior ministry is sort of unrestrained for any event that attracts hundreds of thousands,” said David Poinsignon, a lawyer representing four people hit with MICAS orders for the games, two of whom had them extended for the Christmas market.
He is especially worried about cases involving people with no terrorism-related convictions, saying: “It has almost become an instrument of predictive justice.”
Ben Saul, U.N. special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, said France should use MICAS orders sparingly, “to address a credible risk of terrorism where less intrusive means would not be sufficient.”
“Since they may be imposed without the robust fair trial safeguards of a criminal trial, there is a greater risk of abuse, arbitrariness or discrimination,” he told Reuters.
The interior ministry did not comment. Former Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said in July that the measures were only being used for people he described as “very dangerous” and potentially able to carry out attacks.
TOUGHER SECURITY LAWS
The introduction of MICAS orders was part of a steady toughening of French security laws over the past decade as President Emmanuel Macron’s government responded to deadly attacks and a growing political threat from the far-right.
Until recently, the measures were mainly used to monitor people after prison sentences.
Reuters could not obtain data for last year. But former inmates accounted for 79% of the 136 MICAS orders issued in the year ending in October 2022, according to figures from an unpublished interior ministry report, which was submitted to parliament in 2023 and verified by two sources.
An intelligence source, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss security matters, said in November that MICAS orders had proven effective during the Olympics, and authorities would take the same no-risk approach toward those who might target Christmas markets.
A tradition dating back to the Middle Ages, many towns host the festive markets, which feature stalls offering gifts, decorations and treats such as pretzels and mulled wine.
The one in Strasbourg is France’s oldest and biggest, attracting some 3 million visitors last year.
In 2018, a gunman opened fire there, killing five people and wounding 11 others. The assailant was on a security watchlist and had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group.
The suspect in the Magdeburg attack, which killed at least five people and injured scores, is a 50-year-old psychiatrist from Saudi Arabia who has lived in Germany for nearly two decades.
The motive remains unclear. Investigators are probing the suspect’s criticism of the treatment of Saudi refugees in Germany, among other things. He also has a history of anti-Islamic rhetoric and has voiced support on social media platform X for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
RISE IN APPEALS
As French authorities have expanded their use of MICAS orders, they have faced more successful court challenges.
As of November, judges across the country had cancelled or suspended 50 Olympics-related MICAS orders, about 9%, according to the parliamentary report. That was “often because of insufficient evidence of a threat” in the intelligence reports used to justify the measures, it said.
There have also been at least five successful appeals against measures issued for the Christmas market, according to records from the Strasbourg court.
In the first five years after MICAS orders were introduced, 13 out of 1,203 orders, 1%, were successfully appealed, according to the interior ministry’s 2023 report.
Nicolas Klausser, a legal scholar from France’s National Centre for Scientific Research who studies MICAS cases, said the increase could be partly a product of the growing number of appeals, but the widening profile of those targeted was likely a significant factor.
They include people who may know someone with a terrorism-related conviction, or who made statements about Israel’s war in Gaza described by authorities as an “apology for terrorism”, but who do not have criminal records themselves, Klausser said.
In Khaled’s case, intelligence reports reviewed by Reuters said he spent time with a person convicted of associating with a group planning a terrorist act and another convicted of “apology for terrorism”.
Khaled said these were people he knew from the neighbourhood where he grew up or a gym he frequents, but he was not close with either of them.
The reports also allege relations with other people described as “pro-Jihadist”. Khaled said these were also mostly neighbourhood acquaintances. Three were friends for a time, but they did not discuss violent extremism, he said.
In one instance, Khaled is said to have told a friend that a “dirty trick was being prepared, and he was going to be frankly delighted”. The conversation took place on the eve of the 2020 assassination of a French secondary school teacher who showed his pupils caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad during a class on free speech, according to the intelligence reports.
Khaled denies he said that. The conversation was about a wedding, he told Reuters, not the assassination of Samuel Paty.
His lawyer, Lucie Simon, dismissed the purported remark as “nonsense,” saying no evidence was provided in the intelligence notes, and no charges were brought against her client in connection with the killing.
The interior ministry did not comment. Its representatives have said at hearings for other cases that details in the intelligence notes are intentionally vague to protect sources.
Khaled said he was shocked and worried when he learned from a news report that the attack was carried out by a teenager of Chechen origin.
“It’s the community that’s going to pay,” he recalled thinking.
On Dec. 6, the interior ministry extended his MICAS order a third time. He appealed and is awaiting the outcome.
(Reporting by Layli Foroudi and Juliette Jabkhiro; Editing by Alexandra Zavis)
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