EDINBURGH, January 8 (Sputnik), Mark Hirst — The attack on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris is what the terrorism threat is set to look like for “the foreseeable future”, with the Paris attacks having "institutional significance" for the attackers, experts told Sputnik on Thursday.
“It is a really tough challenge. For the foreseeable future this is what the [terrorism] threat is going to look like. I don’t think you can prevent something like this happening,” Anthony Richards, a UK-based leading counter-terrorism expert, said.
Richards, who is a former Senior Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, added that despite considerable work going into gathering intelligence on potential attacks, there will never be a way of fully protecting people against the kind of violence experienced in Paris.
“There will be others we are not aware of, so the idea of preventing something like this happening is never going to happen. You can never have full-proof security,” Richards said.
Gilbert Ramsay, a lecturer at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews, told Sputnik the attack on Charlie Hebdo had “institutional significance” for the attackers.
“This attack is all about the continuing significance of media institutions. The Internet is full of pictures of Muhammad. What made Charlie Hebdo worth attacking, presumably, was the institutional significance of it as part of the French political culture, not its content in and of itself,” Ramsay told Sputnik.
Ramsay added that the significance given to the attack by most media organizations did not match the concerns displayed by numerous jihadi social media sites that terrorism experts monitor.
“The reaction to the attack seems to me to be very much centered around some notion of a mainstream national community in France and other Western states which satirical magazines like Charlie Hebdo broadly speaking serve,” Ramsay told Sputnik. “Looking through the various jihadi twitter accounts I follow, the [Charlie Hebdo] shooting is frankly not at the center of their concerns.”
According to Ramsay, the attention being given to the terrorists over the Charlie Hebdo attack comes mainly from “the identity groups and public spheres that interpret it as an attack on their core values.”
Meanwhile, Ian Hyslop, Editor of the UK’s leading satirical magazine Private Eye, told Sputnik he was “appalled and shocked by the murderous attack on free speech in the heart of Europe.”
“I offer my condolences to the families and friends of those killed — the cartoonists, journalists and those who were trying to protect them. They paid a very high price for exercising their comic liberty,” Hyslop added.
On Wednesday, three men attacked the office of the magazine in central Paris, killing 12 people. Earlier, it was reported that seven individuals, possibly linked to the attack, had been arrested, with a nationwide manhunt underway for two more gunmen.
The two main suspects in the case are two Frenchmen of Algerian descent, brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi. The third suspect has surrendered himself to the police, saying he did not take part in the attack and had an alibi.
Thursday is a day of national mourning in France. Flags on French state buildings are being flown at half-mast and will continue to do so for the following two days. The security threat level in France remains at its highest.
