WHENEVER there is a terrorist attack anywhere in Europe, the same arguments pop up inevitably in the media. Insufficient security measures, out-of-control immigration, radically Islamised neighbourhoods around main cities, etc.
But after the Brussels horrors last month, polemic over a subject that has been a taboo following the abolition of capital punishment in France in 1981, is alive once again. How about restoring the death penalty for those guilty of committing terrorist acts?
Supporters argue the maximum retribution under the current French law consists of awarding life imprisonment only to killers of children or to those who have assassinated security personnel like a policeman or gendarme. But it is rare for a person thus condemned to stay in jail for life, as most of them are released after an average of 15 to 20 years on a promise of good behaviour.
“Can you imagine Salah Abdesalam, the terrorist recently arrested in Brussels who was the mastermind behind the Nov 13 massacres in Paris last year in which more than 130 people had lost their lives, walking out of jail in a few years time pretending to be a model citizen?” asks an editorial in a daily newspaper.
Many French MPs such as Olivier Dassault, Laurent Wauquiez, Nadine Morano, Rachida Dati and Xavier Bertrand have openly pleaded either in favour of re-establishing capital punishment, or at least for permanent life imprisonments in cases of terrorism.
As a matter of fact Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, a prominent and outspoken rightist MP, and a possible candidate in next year’s presidential election, asks in her open letter to Prime Minister Manuel Valls: “After these national and European tragedies, would you or would you not accept the re-establishment of effective and irrevocable life sentences to people behind such barbarous acts of terrorism?”
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, an MP who keeps his distance from all the French political parties and groups, and is seen as a presidential candidate in 2017, goes even further. He is for heavily guarded, Alcatraz-like prisons on isolated islands for convicted jihadists.
While the prime minister’s response is still awaited, his own Socialist party’s leaders are not in favour of such a constitutional amendment. Bruno LeRoux, an MP, says there is no difference between hanging a convict and a permanent life imprisonment that in reality amounts to a prolonged and painful death sentence: “One has no right to give up hope of reintegration, even of a terrorist, into the society.”
Cases of life terms without parole do exist in France though they are extremely rare. Currently, there are only three such convicts in prisons: the first of these being Nicolas Blondiau who had kidnapped, raped and murdered an eight-year-old girl, Pierre Bodein, another rapist-murderer, and finally Michel Fourniret, a serial killer. But their convictions go only as far back as 2007 and sceptics say given the “human rights fever” that has the French society in its grips for many years now, nobody knows if these monsters would soon be walking free in the streets.
As for the Socialist government spokesman Stéphane LeFoll, a mid course between death sentence and permanent life term is possible if convicted criminals could be sent to prison initially for a period of between 22 and 30 years following which they could be released if they are no longer a threat to society.
The government’s hesitant attitude over tougher measures came to the spotlight once more last Tuesday when President François Hollande renounced his much publicised constitutional change meant to deprive terrorists of French nationality.
Nevertheless, a majority of French citizens apparently thinks otherwise. An opinion poll recently conducted by the daily Le Figaro shows 96 per cent of the voters agree on the proposal of permanent life imprisonments for terrorists.
The writer is a journalist based in Paris.
Published in Dawn, April 3rd, 2016
Dear visitor, the comments section is undergoing an overhaul and will return soon.