Gérald Darmanin had a deadline well in mind for his visit to the United States: the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. For the Minister of the Interior, they are above all synonymous with a huge security challenge, with the fear that the event not be targeted by terrorists. Being Washington and New York, with a jump to the UN, the “first cop in France” came to boost police and judicial cooperation between France and the United States, provided for by a 2016 agreement, for the fight against terrorism and serious crime.
“We have come to remind them that for Europeans and for France, the primary risk is Sunni Islamist terrorism and that anti-terrorist collaboration between intelligence services is absolutely essential,” said Gérald Darmanin in an interview with AFP on Friday. New York. And “at a time when the Americans perhaps have a more national vision of the disputes – white supremacism, repeated shootings, conspiracy – they must not forget what appears to us in Europe as the first threat: Sunni terrorism “, insisted the French minister.
Regrettable departures from Afghanistan and the Sahel
He spoke with Deputy Justice Minister Lisa Monaco and Homeland Security Minister Alejandro Mayorkas, then visited the FBI Federal Police Training Center in Quantico, Virginia. In New York, he met the chief of police of the megalopolis, Keechant Sewell, to talk about maintaining order and security of major international events, citing the 2024 Olympics in Paris, the Rugby World Cup and the visit of Pope Francis to Marseilles on September 23.
In this context, but without mentioning specific threats, Gérald Darmanin affirmed that “the risk resumes” in terms of “Islamist terrorism” which would once again target France and its European neighbors. He thus deplored the “departure of Americans from Afghanistan” and that of France from “the Sahelo-Saharan strip”, “the reconstitution of Daesh cells in the Levant, which means that these exogenous threats, in the perspective of major events that France is going to organize, are times of significant risk of terrorist attacks”.
