Paris calls for overhaul of French intelligence services in wake of 2015 attacks
Paris July 5:French intelligence services should be overhauled in the wake of the 2015 Paris attacks, a parliamentary commission of inquiry has recommended.
Various services should be merged into a single agency, the commission said.
Commission president Georges Fenech proposed a body similar to the US National Counter-Terrorism Centre.
The attacks in November 2015, which left 130 people dead, prompted criticism of the security forces’ response.
A parliamentary inquiry set up following the Paris terror attacks of November 13th made its conclusions public on Tuesday.
The inquiry also made several recommendations for how France can best avoid another devastating terror attack in the future – firstly by calling for an overhaul of the country’s intelligence services.
“Facing the threat of international terrorism, we need to be far more ambitious than we currently are in terms of intelligence,” the inquiry’s leader Georges Fenech said, before recommending a national counter-terrorism agency be set up.
“We have seen during our trips abroad that neither the head of the Israeli, Greek or American intelligence services were able to identify their French counterpart in charge of counter-terrorism,” said Fenech.
