If France’s anti-mass migration Front National (FN) party had been in power, the Islamist terrorist attacks on the streets of Paris last November would have been prevented, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen has asserted.
The rising star of France’s right and niece of FN leader Marine Le Pen also said German migration policy is “crazy”, drew strong links between immigration and the terror risk, and said her party would strip captured militants like Salah Abdeslam (who is now suing the French state) of their nationality.
Speaking to French broadcaster BFM TV in an interview on Sunday evening, she said:
“If Front National measures had been in place at the time of the attacks on November 13, we probably wouldn’t have had a November 13,” a day on which 130 innocent civilians were massacred on the streets of the French capital by Islamic State (IS) linked militants.
Thanks to Europe’s open door ‘refugee’ policy and free movement within Europe, the attackers traveled unhindered, back and forth between Syria and France. “Three of the terrorists who attacked had taken the migrant route,” explained Ms. Le Pen.
“This is not the National Front which is anxious; the reality is anxiety,” she said, before insisting her party would never have allowed in such a migrant wave from the Middle East.
“Most of [the terrorists] that hit France… would have been behind bars” if the NF held power, she added.
Reacting to a question about German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Ms. Le Pen said simply: “The German migration policy is crazy”.
“Immigration in France has become a breeding ground for radicalisation, this is where we will look for the little soldiers of Jihadism,” she said, referring to Salah Abdeslam, the Franco-Belgian terrorist arrested this Friday in Brussels.
However, Salah Abdeslam is “an immigrant” she insisted, adding: “We must, of course, revoke the citizenship”.
“Marion Maréchal-Le Pen’s comments on the November 13 [attacks] are stupid,” immediately tweeted Paris’s Socialist Mayor, Anne Hidalgo.
She also asked why such an “anti-republican” politician had been allowed to speak for two hours on television, implying the right wing should be silenced in the media.
“Since the attacks, #Paris rises. There is a great desire among Parisians to live together in fellowship,” the socialist claimed.