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French police round up suspected Islamists

29 March 2012 22:15 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. French police arrested 19 people in a crackdown on suspected Islamist networks Friday as President Nicolas Sarkozy made the battle against extremism the keynote of his re-election campaign, APA reports quoting AFP.

Arrests took place in several cities, including Toulouse, where extremist gunman Mohamed Merah was shot dead by police last week after a series of cold-blooded shootings that left seven dead, including three Jewish children.

Sarkozy said the arrests targeted "radical Islam" and that the trauma in France after the shootings in Toulouse and nearby Montauban was like that felt in the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Agents from the DCRI domestic intelligence agency and elite police carried out the dawn raids in Toulouse in the southwest, the Paris region, Nantes in the west, Lyon in the southeast and the Provence region.

Three of the 19 suspects arrested were women, police said.

Judicial sources said 17 of those arrested were being held for questioning. In France, suspects in terror-related cases can be held for up to four days without charge.

A senior police source told AFP authorities had up to 100 suspected Islamist radicals in their sights and Sarkozy said Friday’s operation was only a start.

"There will be other operations that will continue and will also allow us to expel from our national territory a certain number of people," said Sarkozy, in the thick of campaigning for France’s April-May presidential election.

"What must be understood is that the trauma of Montauban and Toulouse is profound for our country, a little -- I don’t want to compare the horrors -- a little like the trauma that followed in the United States and in New York after the September 11, 2001 attacks," he told Europe 1 radio.

After trailing Socialist candidate Francois Hollande for months in the polls, Sarkozy has jumped ahead in first-round voter intentions and seen his support rise in the wake of the attacks.

Generally seen as stronger on security than Hollande, Sarkozy is keen to make law and order a key issue in a campaign that has so far been dominated by the economy, jobs and spending power, where the Socialist is stronger.

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French police round up suspected Islamists

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