French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said: “We note the power of the threat, a threat level (France) has never before known. The threat is outside, the threat is inside.” Yes, it is. But neither Valls nor any other Western leader is prepared to speak with full honesty about where exactly it is, and from what sources it derives.
Last September, Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani ash-Shami called on Muslims to murder non-Muslims in the West, especially in France: “If you can kill a disbelieving American or European – especially the spiteful and filthy French – or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever […] including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be.”
More on this story. “France arrests 3 planning ISIS-style beheading in commando base,” Associated Press, July 16, 2015:
Three suspects arrested this week in a plot to attack a French military base had planned to decapitate an officer and film the scene, a judicial official said Thursday.
The hilltop Fort Bear, overlooking the Mediterranean, which is used for training by commandos, was the target location, said the official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the case.
The arrests, announced on Wednesday by Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, injected a new dose of tension into a nation already on edge over terror threats….
“We note the power of the threat, a threat level (France) has never before known,” said Prime Minister Manuel Valls. “The threat is outside, the threat is inside.”…
The three in the latest case were arrested on Monday along with a 16-year-old who was released on Wednesday and is no longer a suspect, the official said. A 17-year-old was the alleged instigator. The eldest, 23, was a former Marine dropped from the corps, Cazeneuve said without elaborating.
The judicial official said the plot centered on an attack on Fort Bear with plans to decapitate an officer and film the scene, mimicking the grisly killings of the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, a scenario confirmed during interrogation.
They were arrested Monday in three locations around France, in Marseille, in the northern Nord region, and in Chesnay west of Paris.