How French schoolteacher killer went on attack despite anti-terror agency surveillance
Several thousand people gathered in the north-east French town of Arras on Sunday to pay tribute to the victims of the knife attack at a local school on Friday which left a schoolteacher dead and three of his colleagues seriously wounded. The attacker, a 20-year-old man originally from the Russian Federation’s Caucasus region who arrived in France with his family in 2008, had been the subject of surveillance by France’s domestic intelligence agency, the DGSI, who considered him a potential danger for his apparent affiliation with radical Islamism. But his intention to commit an imminent attack was not identified. Matthieu Suc reports on the reasons behind the failure, and several similar previous cases in France that highlight the difficulties of intelligence services in preventing terrorist attacks.
BeforeBefore entering the Gambetta-Carnot secondary school in Arras, north-east France, last Friday, when he fatally stabbed a teacher, 20-year-old Mohammed Mogoushkov had been under surveillance by France’s domestic intelligence service, the DGSI, for more than two months. His phone conversations were listened to and his use of the internet was most probably tracked.
