French special services will undergo thorough checks after a knife attack on the Paris police headquarters, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on Sunday.
In an interview with the Journal du Dimanche, the French prime minister noted that the intelligence services have the priority of identifying internal threats, and in this regard, "signs of radicalisation" of its employees cannot be ignored.
"In coordination with the president of the republic, I turned to the special services inspectorate ... It will show whether the intelligence service of the Paris police prefecture had detection and warning tools [about the radicalisation of employees] and whether they functioned well," Philippe said.
Secondly, the inspection, according to the prime minister, will also affect other special services units that are dealing with the fight against terrorism.
On 3 October, a software engineer in the Paris Prefecture headquarters attacked law enforcement officers with a knife at his workplace in the centre of the French capital. The attacker identified as Michael Harpon, 45, had been working in the prefecture since 1993. A total of five people, including the attacker, were killed in the incident. France’s national anti-terrorist prosecutor, Jean-Francois Ricard, later said that Harpon was a radicalised Islamist.
