Manuel Valls explains the non-expulsion of the family of the Arras high school attacker, who had their right to asylum rejected in 2014.
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“These are useless controversies” on a file that he “didn’t have to deal”. Manuel Valls explains on Franceinfo on Sunday why the family of the main suspect in the Arras terrorist attack was not expelled at the beginning of 2014, when he was François Hollande’s Minister of the Interior. Originally from the Caucasus and living in Rennes, “this family had been denied asylum and put on a plane to Paris”. She then “refused, undoubtedly under the advice of associations or lawyers, to board the plane which was to take them to Moscow”.
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While Mohammed M. and his relatives were “in a detention center”his office “considered that the family, who had been there for more than five years, who had children in school from CP or CE1 to sixth grade, met the criteria of what was called the Valls circular concerning undocumented immigrants, expulsions of children. For this reason, “she was not expelled”. He doesn’t “don’t believe” that this decision was made “under pressure from associations”even if he recognizes that “this pressure existed”.
“I understand that questions arise to understand, to analyze the journey of this family”, adds the former socialist Prime Minister. But for him, it’s more “the process of radicalization” of this former student of the Gambetta school campus that we must “to understand”. He notably remembers the words of one of the colleagues of Dominique Bernard, the French teacher stabbed to death. “There were signs of radicalization that arrived, little by little” And “it had been spotted in classes”said Martin Doussau, Sunday on franceinfo.
“When we have these elements, why doesn’t it come back faster? Why can’t there already be protection processes?”says Manuel Valls. “All these questions are legitimate, and I am only trying to establish the facts. Let us not argue and above all be very transparent with our compatriots”he concludes.