ISIS threats to France: Paris departs from the eyes of the birds of darkness

France was and still is a primary goal of ISIS and its lone wolves, as Paris had participated heavily in the international coalition against the organization in Syria and Iraq. But for a whole year, the terrorist organization has not issued any clear threats to France through Telegram as it once did. 

Despite the weakness of the terrorist organization’s media machine after suffering painful strikes this year, the beginning of its official defeat in Syria, and the killing of its former leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in October 2019, European fears of ISIS are increasing with the start of the New Year celebrations, fearing that ISIS will return to repeat the bloody attacks of 2015 and the Christmas market attack in Strasbourg during last year's celebrations.

Bloody attacks

During recent years, the City of Light witnessed bloody attacks by ISIS wolves after former ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani – who was killed in August 2016 in an air strike carried out by the international coalition forces in Aleppo, Syria – said in an audio recording in 2014, “Do your best to kill any American or French, or any of their allies. If you can’t with explosives or bullets, isolate the disbeliever and stone him, slit him with a knife, throw him from a high-rise, or run over him with a car.” 

On a bloody November 13, 2015, ISIS militants launched several simultaneous attacks at six vital locations in Paris, most notably the Stade de France and the Bataclan theater, killing 130 people and wounding 368 others. 

The last ISIS attacks in France were on December 12, 2018, when 29-year-old Cherif Chekatt opened fire at the Christmas market in the center of Strasbourg, killing three people. He was killed days later in a security operation launched by the French police in the Neudorf-Meinau district of Strasbourg, about two kilometers from the site of the attack.

Fake videos

In 2018, ISIS published a video on Telegram that included clear and explicit threats to attack France, using war scenes from the game “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3”. 

The video, which was broadcast by the terrorist organization before its fall, included many fictitious scenes borrowed from the famous game, including scenes of storming the streets of Paris and its main landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, and utilized Adnani’s speech from 2015, in which he said, “We want Paris before Rome, before Andalusia” and then added that they will blow up the “White House, Big Ben and Eiffel Tower.” 

The organization also published scenes in the video, which did not exceed six minutes, of fake attacks by its members in Paris, including a scene targeting a French army vehicle on the outskirts of the city. 

A more famous video broadcast by the terrorist organization used a speech Abu Qital al-Faransi, the perpetrator of the November 2015 Paris attack, in which he said, “We will fight you in the heart of Paris and at the Eiffel Tower.”

Prior to the 2018 World Cup, ISIS began to monitor a number of prominent world figures and publicly threaten to target them. Most notable was the coach of the French national team, Didier Deschamps, who led France to victory in the 1998 World Cup, as ISIS sought to retaliate for France's participation in the international coalition fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

Fears of militants returning

The recent phenomenon of French ISIS returnees has been a security nightmare that haunts the country’s political decision-makers, as there are widespread fears that they will carry out more brutal terrorist operations than their predecessors in order to avenge ISIS’s military defeats in the various regions that were under its control, especially during the Christmas holiday season. 

According to the European Center for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies based in the Netherlands and Germany, the number of French ISIS members who joined the terrorist organization is approximately 1,200 people, most of them in Syria, where 400 are in the prisons of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the country’s north.