At least 137 dead and 182 injured. This is the latest report released from the attack that occurred Friday evening in Moscow, at Crocus City Hall. This shooting, claimed on Friday evening by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS), is not just a bloody message sent by IS to Russia: this attack shows the entire international community that it is also alive. under the threat.
If the branch of the organization which committed the attack has not been specified, the eyes of experts are turning towards the Afghan section of Daesh, the Islamic State of Khorasan (EI-K), from the historical name of an part of the Indian subcontinent. EI-K, which was created in Afghanistan by IS emissaries from Iraq and Syria, faces the Taliban in power in that country.
This IS affiliate sees beyond Afghanistan. “IS-K has established itself as the most internationally oriented branch of IS. It has produced propaganda in more languages than any other affiliate since the height of the (self-proclaimed) Caliphate. ) in Iraq in Syria”, analysis with AFP Lucas Webber, co-founder of the specialized site Militant Wire. “They have very close links with the central, much more than the other subsidiaries” of the group in the world and obtain the funds what they need, assures AFP Hans-Jakob Schindler, director of the NGO Counter Extremism project (CEP) and former United Nations expert on terrorism.
“This organization threatens France”
Like several states, France is worried about the threat posed by this branch of IS. Sunday evening, Gabriel Attal announced “raising” the Vigipirate plan in France to its highest level following the attack on Moscow. “Given the claim of responsibility for the attack by the Islamic State and the threats weighing on our country, we have decided to raise the Vigipirate posture to its highest level: attack emergency,” indicated the Prime Minister on the social network X following a defense council at the Elysée. The Vigipirate plan was downgraded to level 2 (“reinforced security – risk of attack”) last January.
“The claim for the Moscow attack comes from the Islamic State in Khorasan. However, this organization threatens France and has been involved in several recent foiled attack plans in several European countries, including Germany and the France,” Matignon told AFP. This Monday, Emmanuel Macron revealed that this branch of the Islamic State jihadist group “involved” in the attack on Moscow “had carried out several attempts in recent months” on French “soil”. “And therefore, taking into account its ramifications and its intentions, as a precautionary measure but with credible and solid elements”, he “decided to raise the posture of Vigipirate”.
In November 2022, a Tajik national and a Chechen who had just entered France were arrested in Strasbourg. As Mediapart reminds usthey were manipulated remotely by a member of the Islamic State of Khorasan.
“France has never stopped being a target”
“France has never ceased to be a target of the Islamic State. It is one of the priority targets of the Islamic State,” indicates on RMC Wassim Nasr, journalist at France 24 and specialist in jihadism. “Several attacks have been foiled in Europe and France with nationals of the former Soviet republics commissioned by this branch of IS,” he continues. Wassim Nasr also believes that the next Olympic Games, in Paris this summer, an international event, are “obviously a potential target”, even if the police, the gendarmerie and French intelligence “will be ready”, he reassured Monday. Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin.
“Threats have been taken seriously for several months by France. What happened in Moscow made visible what was a major concern for the intelligence services,” Alain Bauer, professor, told BFMTV. of criminology at the CNAM.
While, in recent years, the French government and intelligence services have insisted on an increasingly young and unskilled endogenous threat, a senior DGSI executive met by Mediapart at the end of 2023 spoke of “a new trend”: the return of the threat projected from outside, as France experienced it during the attacks of November 13.
According to an AFP investigation published in December 2017many French people had joined the Islamic State of Khorasan at the end of 2017. The territorial losses of Daesh, in Iraq as in Syria, had at the time led to an influx of fighters towards Central Asia . According to a UN report dated February 2022, which is based on several member states, “the strength of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant-Khorasan (ISIL-K) is believed to have increased from 2,200, according to previous estimates, to almost 4,000 , following the release of several thousand prisoners. Furthermore, according to one Member State, ISIL-K “is almost half composed of foreign terrorist fighters.”
Germany also threatened
EI-K has therefore been in the sights of Western police and intelligence services for a long time. The threat weighs on several European countries. German authorities arrested two suspected Afghan jihadists on March 19 suspected of having prepared an attack near the Swedish parliament, in a context of high terrorist threat in the Scandinavian country after the Koran burnings. One of them is said to have joined EI-K from Germany. Several networks have previously been dismantled in Europe, including a first Russian-Tajik network in Germany in 2020. Others suffered the same fate in 2022 and 2023.
In July 2023, remember The world, German, Dutch and Belgian police arrested members of a terrorist group planning, according to the Karlsruhe public prosecutor’s office (Baden-Württemberg), “high visibility” actions in Germany. All these members from Central Asia – Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan – were, according to the courts, in contact with EI-K executives.
Furthermore, since the end of 2023, several external operations carried out by the province of Khorasan have been foiled in India, Iran, Germany, Austria, Spain, the Maldives, Qatar, Turkey and Kyrgyzstan , recalls Mediapart, demonstrating, despite their failure, the desire of the EI-K to internationalize.