Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to electronically tag all 11,500 people on France’s extremist watch list if he retakes the presidency in 2017.
Mr Sarkozy also pledged to “expel forcibly all the imams who preach in radical Salafist mosques” in the wake of Friday’s terror attacks in Paris.
French newspaper Le Figaro says he wants all suspects and potential extremists placed under house arrest, saying the current situation makes it essential to implement such changes.
“There are 520 young French people who are between Syria and Iraq: those who return should be immediately put in prison,” Mr Sarkozy said. Suspects with dual nationality should be deported.
The former president also called for the establishment of a “de-radicalisation centre” for people tempted by extremist ideology and said looking at jihadi websites should be a criminal offence in the same way that paedophilia is.
France’s current president, François Hollande, met with Mr Sarkozy yesterday as well as the increasingly popular Front National leader Marine Le Pen.
Ms Le Pen was topping presidential polls before the Paris attacks, with the most recent poll putting her on 28 per cent, ahead of Mr Sarkozy on 23 per cent. Mr Hollande was lagging behind in third place on just 21 per cent.
She said after the attacks that all of France was now in danger. “By spreading out migrants through the villages and towns of France, there is a fear that terrorists will take advantage of these population flows to hit out at us,” she said.
Today it emerged that France will call for the suspension of the so-called Schengen Zone, where European nations leave their borders open and unchecked.
The free movement zone has already been under pressure due to the ongoing migrant crisis, but now a diplomatic source has said: “The French are going to push hard for everyone else to institute border controls, particularly Belgium, but across the wider euro area. To all intents and purposes it will be a temporary suspension of Schengen.”
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