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(Galatians 4:16)

France's Sarkozy to Boost Surveillance Amid Threat of Attacks

The French government plans new measures to combat terrorism including surveillance of Internet and telephone communications, amid threats of an attack in France, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said.The legislation, which needs parliamentary approval, includes extra use of security cameras in public places, such as outside places of worship, Sarkozy said on state-owned France 3 television channel. The measures are a response to the July 7 suicide bombings on London's transport network that killed 52 people, he said today."It's my duty to draw consequences from what happened in New-York, Madrid and London,'' he said."A high-level threat exists in France. We have to permanently adapt our legislation and our methods.''Sarkozy, 50, announced the plans hours after French police broke up a terrorist group suspected of plotting attacks in France in raids in the Paris region and the north of the country.Under the new legislation, owners of cyber-cafes would have to keep track of connections, he said. Investigators would have easier access to some information from transport companies, and to administrative files."We want to know who leaves, where, for how long and when they return,'' he said."When someone lives in a neighborhood suddenly disappears in Afghanistan and returns four months later, it's within our right to ask him what he's been doing.''He said about 10 young French people are currently in Iraq ready to commit suicide bombings, and estimated that six more already died this way.
Stripping Nationality
Sarkozy also said he wants to reinforce a measure to strip people linked to terrorist operations of French nationality.The approach has drawn criticism from France's 5 million Muslims, who are mainly from former French colonies in Northern Africa."One cannot be stripped of one's nationality, and one should not expel those people,'' said Abderrahmane Ammari, a Morocco-born imam at a mosque in Evry in the Paris suburbs, in an interview last month.Since the London attacks, which were carried out by four British Muslims, the government has stepped up border controls and is quadrupling military forces patrolling public areas. Sarkozy then said that France would speed up deportation of radical imams. Since October 2003, 34 have been expelled and there are about 10 more the government wants to throw out of the country, he said.Laws boosted the arrest and detention powers of French police for suspected terrorists since attacks by Algerian-based terrorists on the Paris subway killed seven people in 1995.
'Suspicious Transactions'
Sarkozy said he's considering extending the detention period for people arrested in terrorist cases to six days from four days currently, for example to check into "suspicious international financial transactions.''In Britain, the Liberal Democrats, the country's third- largest party, threatened to break a cross-party consensus on anti-terrorism laws, saying it won't support two measures Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour government is proposing. One would ban "glorification of terror'' and the other would let police detain suspects for three months without charge.Asked about the threat France's new measures would pose to civil liberties, Sarkozy said that the"first of liberties is to be able to take the metro, the bus, without people fearing for their or their families' lives.''

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