Louis Caprioli, former head of the counter-terrorism unit of the DST, the French equivalent of the FBI, said that behind every Muslim terrorist is a radical imam, and France’s counter-terrorism organization, a unit of the French police called les Renseignements Généraux, or RG, are monitoring imams to prevent potential terrorists from emerging.
Preventive measures include refusing visas to imams coming from Saudi Arabia, expelling Islamist radicals including imams, and arresting and jailing potential terrorists.
Yves Bertrand, the RG’s former chief, said his job as “ the Republic’s land-mine specialist.” And since most new terrorists acts are homegrown and Islamist-inspired, as was the case in London, the RG have been focusing on potential dangerous French residents for at least the past twenty years.
And so, despite the alarming number of radicalized Muslims reported in France—between 50 and 100 thousand—it may be that the French are not necessarily in a state of denial when they suggest that they’ve rounded up the potential terrorists who had been roaming free—but monitored—before the Toulouse murders.