He was the Minister of the Interior during the November 13 attacks that bloodied Paris nearly six years ago. On the eve of the opening of the historic trial of these attacks, which will bring together no less than 1,800 civil parties and during which 20 people will be tried for 140 days of hearing, Bernard Cazeneuve was the guest of Sonia Mabrouk in Europe Matin. While the majority of the terrorists in the Paris attacks were ghosts from the migrant route from Syria, he said increased cooperation and border controls were needed.
“Tighten the stitches more and more”
“The establishment of the PNR (European Air Passenger Register), Frontex, and the strengthening of cooperation between intelligence services should make it possible to tighten the net more and more. There is a need at the external borders of the EU, “he said. Asked about the 20% of people who arrived on European Union soil and were not passed through the Schengen information system – the European security file – on the year 2018, the former Prime Minister said indeed considered that measures had been taken since.
“We do not wait. Much has been done between the rise of Frontex, the reform of the Schengen or Europol borders code and Eurojust which have made it possible to obtain very good results in the fight against terrorism. You know how many information has been exchanged between the police and intelligence services within the European Union since the strengthening of cooperation – 75 million per year, “detailed Bernard Cazeneuve, who specified that 1.1700 people had notably been assigned to Frontex.
“Pointing out the flaws for what they are”
“I am not saying that there were no flaws. I just wish that when there are flaws, we point them out for what they are”, also slipped the one who was then ex-minister of the Interior, with particular reference to the cooperation between the Belgian and French services on the Salah Abdeslam case. “We questioned the Schengen file and it did not reveal at that time what Abdeslam’s real personality was. Quite simply because the services for which it was the competence in Belgium had not informed the file. And it was at the end of the observation of this blunder that I took with Theresa May and Thomas de Maizière, an initiative intended to strengthen cooperation between the intelligence services, “he said.
Regarding these flaws, Bernard Cazeneuve finally explained what posture he adopted vis-à-vis the relatives of the victims. “I am not going to go to trial in front of the families sending a cloud of smoke. I am going to go in front of the families with the desire to be extraordinarily precise,” he said. The former Prime Minister will indeed be present at the trial which opens Wednesday, where he must testify.
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