FRANCE has announced measures to track down radicals among the country’s four million Muslims who have been responsible for turning young men into fighters.

“We have decided to put into effect a widescale operation for the early screening of the elements of radicalisation,” Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister, said. “When you see the age of the young suicide bombers of London, you see the responsibility of the radical preachers on weak minds and I have no intention of tolerating it.”

France’s anti-terrorist police and judges have long said that the country faces a serious threat from “jihadists”, the young radicals from urban estates with big populations of Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian immigrants. Hundreds of French-born Muslims have been trained abroad and dozens have fought in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Iraq, officials say. At least one Iraq suicide bomber has been a French national.

French security and police services believe that they are more aggressive than the British in keeping tabs on underground networks that breed extremism. In 1995 France introduced laws allowing detention for a month on suspicion of associating with terrorist groups after Algerian-based terrorists killed eight people with bombs in Paris. “For us it is unthinkable not to follow every guy who comes back from Afghanistan or Iraq,” an officer of the DST, the French equivalent of MI5, said.

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