Last Thursday, Mickaël Harpon, an Islamist extremist who worked in the intelligence division of the Paris police department, murdered four of his colleagues, three men and one woman. Now Interior Minister Christophe Castaner is facing calls to resign because Harpon’s coworkers had warned their superiors Harpon had argued the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack in which Islamic extremists murdered 12 people and wounded 17 others was justified, but he still wasn’t written up in France’s security database.
The New York Times noted, “The fact that this and other potential clues — including a video the killer posted on Facebook that imitated throat-cutting — were missed by the police administration that surrounded him, at the heart of an organization dedicated to fighting terrorism, has shocked the ranks of the national police.”
Eric Ciotti, a center-right member of Parliament, ripped Castaner, asserting on television, “What French citizen could think that this ministry is well run? This is not reassuring, in the face of what is an extreme menace to our country.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that Castaner said, “The failure was that there wasn’t an alert at that time.” He stated that Harpon’s remarks were totally unacceptable, intolerable, particularly for someone who works for the police.” Castaner said that an official at the prefecture’s internal security department frequently spoke with Harpon about the issue followed up with Harpon, even as recently few weeks ago, adding, “They had the feeling that everything was going well, but everything wasn’t okay.” – READ MORE