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Call to overhaul French intelligence services

In the wake of the 2015 Paris attacks, parliamentary commission says different services should be merged into a single counter-terrorism agency.

La rédaction de Mediapart

This article is freely available.

French intelligence services should be overhauled in the wake of last year's terror attacks in Paris, a parliamentary commission of inquiry has recommended.

Various services should be merged into a single agency, the commission said.

Commission president Georges Fenech proposed a body similar to the US National Counter-Terrorism Centre.

The January and November attacks, which killed 147 people in all, prompted criticism of the security response.

"Faced with the threat of international terrorism we need to be much more ambitious... in terms of intelligence," said Mr Fenech.

The commission also criticised the Belgian authorities for being slow to stop the fugitive Salah Abdeslam, who took part in last November's attacks before fleeing to Belgium. He was eventually arrested in Brussels in March.

Meanwhile the continuing state of emergency imposed after the attacks was only having a "limited impact" on security, the commission found.

Read more of this report from the BBC.