Stop Terrorism at Its Source

Jacques Cheminade, French Presidential candidate and founder of Solidarité et Progrès party issued the following statement on his official candidacy website. The translation was provided by his staff.

France has been hit, once again, by criminal terrorism.

And once again the President of the Republic, the Interior Minister and the Prime Minister expressed their sadness in grave tones and their willingness to fight terrorism, without, however, attacking the real causes of this barbarity.

The main cause is their complicity with a policy of supporting jihadism aimed to bring about the fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad government, devised by the United States, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, a policy which is now turning against us.

What is going on in Nice? Since 2014, it was known that the city had become a recruitment center for jihadists going to Syria.  A report from the domestic security agency DGSI (General Direction for Domestic Security) even noted that Nice has become a “laboratory city” to identify and deal with “radicalization.”

It was from Nice that Omar Osman, a Franco-Senegalese gangster who converted to Islam, recruited his brigade of 50 to 80 Frenchmen, to fight in Syria within the Al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda in Syria), about which in 2012 our then Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Fabius said, with inappropriate enthusiasm that it was “doing a good job” fighting Assad.

It is also in Nice that it was revealed that potential jihadists were coming and going, travelling with Saudi Arabian diplomatic suitcases.  On April 7th, Mayor Christian Estrosi, told to RTL radio’s Olivier Mazerolle in an interview, that in August 2015 two people listed on the S-file of radicalized individuals requiring the highest-level surveillance, had entered France “in a Saudi Arabian convoy” and “that they benefited from a total exemption of inspection” at Nice’s international airport. Asked by his host whether the airport security police had been forced to let them through, Estrosi responded: “Yes, and I know that some of them are very upset, and they let be it known and had to suffer consequences.”

The government can no longer drag its feet on this question, at the risk of ending up like Tony Blair, today or tomorrow, where they will have to explain their actions before a Chilcot Commission, or worse, before a court of law.

The time has come to rapidly reestablish our relations with Bashar al-Assad to undertake the rebuilding and reconstruction of Syria; to work alongside Russia to fight the terrorist threat together; and to strongly induce the United States to do likewise.

Our police, our military, our reservists, and medical caregivers taught Nice a lesson in solidarity and of civic-mindedness. Let us be worthy of their attachment to the values of the Republic and respect for the victims, in order to stop the sinister train of attacks and to avert the specter of division in our country, a rampant radicalization which would overturn the deep balance of our desire to live together.