Ten years ago, France experienced two series of deadly attacks that profoundly shocked the country.
On 7 and 9 January 2015, in Paris and its inner suburbs, armed men targeted the editorial offices of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper, police officers and customers of a kosher supermarket.
Seventeen people were killed and the three assailants were shot dead by police. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQMI) claimed responsibility for the attack.
Ten months later, on 13 November, attacks carried out by three men in and around Paris, including in the Bataclan concert hall in the capital, killed 130 people. They were claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.
These attacks had an important impact on French society and politics, accelerating a slide towards what critics see as a security state, supported by a raft of laws that appeared as increasingly restrictive.
After the January attacks, France, through the words of then Prime Minister Manuel Valls, declared itself to be in a “war on terror”.
The laws that followed were akin to the US Patriot Act following 9/11. The 2015 attacks had far-reaching legislative consequences for individual rights and civil liberties in France.
As the Bataclan crisis was still unfolding, French President François Hollande announced the immediate application of a state of emergency throughout the country.
This exceptional measure, supposed to last for 12 days according to the law, was extended several times until November 2017, for a total of 719 days, almost two years.
Normalisation of exceptional measures
To do so, the authorities reactivated article 6 of the April 1955 law on the state of emergency. Passed during the Algerian independence war, the legislation still bore the spirit of this period and its idea of an enemy within.
The article was amended with a new wording that allowed the placement under house arrest of any person “with regard to whom there are serious reasons to believe that their behaviour constitutes a threat to public security and order”. The previous wording provided for this measure only in the case of people whose “activity proves to be a threat to public security and order”.
The shift was striking: from activity to behaviour, from proof to “serious reason to believe”, from objectivity to subjectivity and potential arbitrariness.
Straight afterwards, a series of exceptional measures were also contemplated, including the constitutionalisation of the state of emergency - whereby some of its measures could have been taken without resorting to it - and the extension of the withdrawal of nationality to French-born dual nationals convicted of terrorism.
Faced with parliamentary opposition, Hollande eventually abandoned his plans. But they opened a breach that has continued to widen ever since.
A candle is lit next to a poster reading "Je suis Charlie" (I am Charlie) in front of the French embassy in Berlin on 7 January 2015 (John MacDougall/AFP)
") rgba(220, 220, 220, 0.5); top: -15px; left: 0px;">The anti-terrorism legislation evolved several times over the following years, notably with a law of June 2016 that included controversial provisions such as the more relaxed use of weapons by law enforcement officers.
The provision has been denounced, including by the UN, in the face of increasing instances of disproportionate use of force by the police, particularly against people of African and Arab descent.
In fact, the attacks gave rise to legislation that was intended to be temporary, but ended up being incorporated into ordinary law.
The turning point was new legislation including some measures decided under the state of emergency: the so-called Silt law “strengthening internal security and the fight against terrorism”. It was passed in October 2017, a few months after the election of Emmanuel Macron.
Read More »
“It constituted a paradigm shift that opened up the possibility of exceptional measures now being included in our customary legislation,” Vincent Brengarth, a lawyer who defended people targeted by home searches and house arrests, told Middle East Eye.
The Silt law has been described by critics as a kind of “permanent state of emergency”.
In a 2018 report on the consequences of the state of emergency, the ombudsman noted that this normalisation of exceptional measures greatly extended the powers of the administrative police and weakened guarantees for a fair trial.
For Brengarth, the Silt legislation has worked in tandem with the August 2021 "law consolidating the principles of the republic" - known as the “anti-separatism law” - to repress civil liberties in France, especially for Muslims.
The latter was described by many observers as an “apparent ease in the restriction of freedoms”, including freedom of association. For instance, NGOs supported by public funds were required to sign a “contract of republican commitment” that was as vague as it was coercive.
It signalled, according to Brengarth, “a new episode in a more general tightening up” designed to create new offences.
Vague notions were introduced into common law, such as “separatism” and “the principles of the Republic”, in what the lawyer described as a “legislative white elephant and an accumulation of sometimes redundant texts”.
Muslim practices in the cross hairs
For most French people, the state of emergency was painless, merely materialised by the presence of armed soldiers patrolling the streets. For others, it was synonymous with a legal and administrative apparatus conveying real and symbolic state violence.
Citing figures published by the government, Amnesty International reported in January 2017 that since the November 2015 attacks, 4,292 home searches had been carried out and 612 people placed under house arrest.
Less than one percent of the home searches carried out between November 2015 and February 2016 had resulted in charges of terrorist activity (excluding offences for so-called “apology for terrorism”, a charge that involves defending or positively portraying terrorist acts).
'When the state of emergency was lifted, I was suddenly no longer dangerous. In the same way that, overnight, I had become so. And this, still without any explanation'
- Samir
According to the UN special rapporteur on the promotion of human rights while countering terrorism, "the French Muslim community is the one that has been mainly targeted by exceptional measures", citing as an example the closure of mosques as an infringement on the exercise of religious freedom.
Samir* was among the victims of this state reaction to the attacks. He was placed under house arrest the day after the Bataclan killings and his house was searched a few days later.
“Police officers showed up at my door. They gave me a simple document that said I was now under house arrest, with an obligation to report three times a day to the police station and to be at home from 8pm to 7am. No explanation was given to me other than that I was dangerous,” he told MEE.
Samir described a reversal of the principle of the burden of proof, which normally falls to the prosecution, and denounced the use of the so-called "white notes", reports compiled anonymously by intelligence officers that often served as the basis for police summons and searches.
According to several testimonies and media investigations, those notes are mainly based on signs of religiosity considered excessive - a stain on the forehead indicative of regular prayers, a long beard, Islamic clothing, an index finger pointing upwards, etc - or anonymous denunciations.
Read More »
"At the administrative court, I found myself before the public prosecutor who cites these anonymous, undated and unsigned notes, about which we know nothing and against which we must defend ourselves," he said.
In fact, those caught in the net of the state of emergency were accused of acts that had more to do with their religious practice than with participation in violent projects.
Samir recalls that during the search of his home, a book on Islamic hadiths, the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad which Muslims use as guidance, was seized as it was considered a call for jihad.
“I was also accused of having rubbed shoulders at the mosque with a man who had ended up going to Syria [to join IS]. According to the authorities, I was close enough to him to know his ideas,” he told MEE.
Throughout his house arrest, Samir lost work opportunities, faced permanent suspicion and had his ID papers taken. The measure was lifted when the state of emergency ended, without further explanation.
'Devastating traumatic memory'
For psychiatrist and author Fatma Bouvet de la Maisonneuve, all these measures and the climate of suspicion against Muslims that followed the 2015 attacks have deeply affected the community, to the point of creating what she calls a “media trauma” in some of her patients.
She explains that media reports claiming that no Muslims participated in the large demonstrations organised in solidarity with the victims of the attacks were experienced by the community “as an insult that added to the already heavy suspicions they had to bear”.
“My Muslim patients explained to me that being assimilated to terrorists was a huge wound for them. So much so that during the November attacks, the first reflex for many was to be relieved that Muslims were also among the victims,” she told MEE.
'[Muslims] understand why the path was so hard for them. Because, quite simply, they were not considered French. The attacks and the reaction of the state revealed all that'
- Fatma Bouvet de la Maisonneuve, psychiatrist
The French-Tunisian psychiatrist says some of her Muslim patients still suffer from a traumatic memory, made up of anxiety, low self-esteem and self-deprecation.
She also notes that men have been more impacted than women.
"One of my patients told me: 'Today, in France and in the world, Arab men are seen as sub-humans because they are considered a priori as potential terrorists.' But it is hardly better for Muslim women because they are infantilised as North Africans, Arabs, Muslims," ??she told MEE.
Ten years later, Samir, for his part, has resumed his life. He has still not received an apology from the state, even though no charges have been brought against him.
“When the state of emergency was lifted, I was suddenly no longer dangerous. In the same way that, overnight, I had become so. And this, still without any explanation.”
Bouvet de la Maisonneuve observes an increasingly fractured French society.
“I feel that there is a real collective resurgence of traumatic memory, that is to say that all these people who grew up here are realising that ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ and republican values ??were never for them,” the psychiatrist said.
“They understand why the path was so hard for them. Because, quite simply, they were not considered French. The attacks and the reaction of the state revealed all that. And this traumatic memory is absolutely devastating.”
* The name has been changed to preserve the anonymity of the interviewee.
