“I will never forget the look of the police” after the assault on the Hyper Cacher: Bernard Cazeneuve recounts the attacks of January 2015

Before becoming prime minister, he was interior minister during the years when France faced some of the deadliest terrorist attacks in its history. Bernard Cazeneuve returns to us on the crisis of the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the Hyper Cacher that he managed on the front line at Place Beauveau in 2015.

What is your state of mind at the time of commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attack? ?

I was Minister of the Interior during all these years when our country faced terrorist attacks, among the deadliest in its history.

After the crimes in Toulouse and Montauban, France was faced with a real race against time: while the threat level was unprecedented, we needed to significantly increase, in order to protect the Nation, and within a very short time, the resources of the security and intelligence services, which had been significantly reduced by the general review of public policy, implemented between 2007 and 2012.

It was also necessary to modernize the law on intelligence that dated from 1991, that is to say from a time when neither the internet nor mobile phones yet existed, and to strengthen cooperation between the intelligence services of the European Union, in order to better control entries at the external borders of the Schengen area.

When the attacks of January 2015 occurred, France was plunged into grief and felt the feeling that we want to reach it in its foundations – in its love of freedom in particular – with the will to make it bend.

But our country will find in him the strength to remain standing by affirming in the eyes of the world, on January 11, 2015, its unity around the values ​​of the Republic.

How did you manage this crisis as Minister of the Interior? ?

My obsession was to get out of the crisis, by neutralizing the terrorists as quickly as possible. To do this, it was necessary to have perfect coordination of the interventions of the internal security forces, in very close liaison with the prosecutor François Molins, with whom I had a relationship of great trust.

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Surrounded by the top brass of the internal security forces and intelligence services in the so-called Smoking Room on Place Beauvau, I focused on the objective while continuously informing the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister of the progress of the operations, as well as the French people to whom we owed the truth. This strategy allowed us to overcome the crisis with an immense sadness in my heart, which has never left me since.

What image do you keep of it??

I will never forget the look on the faces of the BRI and RAID police officers, whose faces were hidden by their balaclavas, after their intervention to free the hostages from the Hyper Cacher grocery store.

Everything at the time bore witness to their courage, their pride in having saved lives, their sense of duty accomplished, but also their great humility, despite the bravery they had collectively shown a few minutes before.

I felt immense and lasting gratitude for them and for all those who risk their lives to save those of our compatriots.

When on January 11, the French applauded from the windows of Paris, the police officers and gendarmes who had protected them and would continue to protect them, I was moved to tears.

Samuel Paty and Dominique Bernard are dead, since then, have we learned enough lessons from the Charlie Hebdo attacks? ?

Successive governments, after 2017, did what they had to do to maintain a level of vigilance commensurate with the threat, even if they sometimes gave the impression that it all started with them.

I think that the intellectual and moral rearmament of our country, in the face of Islamist totalitarianism, must be amplified and that secularism, which makes schools a sanctuary, must be defended intransigently by the republican State.

No teacher should henceforth find himself in a position to give up his teaching, for the sole reason that he might find himself threatened for wanting to conscientiously accomplish his mission. If this order cannot be defended and respected, then the entire Nation will be threatened in its unity and indivisibility.

Is the terrorist risk more pressing than ever? ?

The developments that have occurred in Afghanistan, and more recently in Syria, the disorders that remain in the Sahel, could be at the origin of new threats, on which we must take a clear-eyed look.

However, the work accomplished over the last ten years to increase the resources of the internal security forces and intelligence allows France to be better equipped than it was to face the terrorist challenge.

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