France Needs to Monitor 3,000 with Extremism Links
Local Editor
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Wednesday that the authorities have to monitor nearly 3,000 people involved in "terrorist networks", as he unveiled measures to combat terrorism after the Paris attacks.
He said the number of people linked to networks in Iraq and Syria had jumped 130 percent in the past year.
Valls also announced 2,680 new jobs and spending of 425 million euros to boost the fight against extremism.
The attacks two weeks ago left 17 people dead and put Europe on high alert, with a wave of police raids, investigations and extraditions taking place across the jittery continent.
"The number one priority, the number one requirement, is to further reinforce the human and technical resources of intelligence services," Valls said.
Of the new jobs announced, 1,400 will be in the police, mostly in intelligence, he added.
Valls also said that 60 extra Muslim clerics would be recruited on top of the 182 who already work in prisons, where two of the three attackers are thought to have been radicalized.
This comes as France has formally charged four suspects with assisting one of the gunmen who carried out the Paris attacks, a prosecutor said Wednesday.
Four men aged between 22 and 28 were charged and remanded in custody on Tuesday night, three of whom are suspected of having bought "equipment" for Amedy Coulibaly, who gunned down a policewoman and killed four people in a hostage drama at a supermarket two weeks ago.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
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