Meknes – French Minister of Interior Gerald Darmanin will visit Algeria and Tunisia to discuss security issues and the repatriation of “radical Islamists” from France.
When asked on Monday about the October 26 Nice attack, which resulted in three killed and multiple injured, Darmanin told BFM TV that he will go to Algiers and Tunis at the end of this week.
The alleged perpetrator of last week’s attack is a 21-year-old Tunisian man who is now in police custody.
In the French minister of interior’s visits to Algeria and Tunisia, he will discuss security issues and the fight against terrorism with his counterparts from the two countries and their intelligence services, according to Le360.
Darmanin will also seize the opportunity to expel “radicalized” Islamists back to their countries of origin, according to the same source.
French media speculate that the minister’s visit to Algeria will take place with the same aims as his visit to Tunisia.
Darmanin’s upcoming visits are at the request of the French President Emmanuel Macron, announced the Elysee.
Macron held a phone call with his Tunisian counterpart, Kais Saied, on Saturday. The two parties discussed the fight again terrorism, as well as the return of “a number of people” who France is moving to deport from its territory, a statement from the Tunisian presidency cited by Arab Weekly said.
The interior minister told BFM TV that he asked prefects to put some 100 irregular migrants in administrative detention centers due to links with “radicalization.” France has expelled 16 people for their links to radicalization in the last month alone, he added.
France has increased its concerns over security and immigration after multiple violent attacks, following satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s republication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Any depiction of the prophet is strictly forbidden in Islam.
Weeks before the stabbings in Nice, an 18-year-old of Chechen origin beheaded on October 16 French middle school teacher Samuel Paty in a Parisian suburb. Paty had showed caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to his students.
The escalating tensions and violence in France raise questions on how to address the issue of terrorism and its relations to immigration.
