French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner has announced that in 2019 the French government closed down two radical mosques and placed another 63 under surveillance.
The two radical mosques closed last year were done so under the powers granted to the Interior Ministry by the SILT anti-terrorism laws that were enacted in October 2017 to replace the prior state of emergency.
Castaner added that there have been a total of “31 terrorist attacks since January 1, 2017” and noted that “30 places of worship are subject to closure measures and 7 procedures are underway”. He claimed that health and safety provisions were also being used in certain cases, LCI reports.
Individual administrative control measures (Micas), which replace house arrests, were also up significantly in 2019 by 84 per cent, for a total of 134 cases.
Most of the cases were focused in the Ille-de-France region where Paris and the no-go multicultural suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis are located.