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Paris Attacks Trial Unfolds in Shadow of COVID

Lisa Bryant

   PARIS - As France revisits its deadly 2015 wave of jihadist strikes
   with a major terrorism trial that opened this week, the threat of
   future attacks remains a clear and present danger here and across the
   European Union, experts say, even as the region focuses on a very
   different crisis in COVID-19.

   On the eve of Wednesday's opening of the Charlie Hebdo trial, Interior
   Minister Gerard Darmanin warned that France's threat level remained
   "extremely high."

   Meanwhile, the EU law enforcement agency Europol described the
   changing, complex and still potent nature of jihadist and other
   threats, with coronavirus potentially feeding extremist action.

   "Groups try to make use of the COVID situation either to enforce their
   ideology or to call for action," Europol's deputy executive director,
   Wil van Gemert, said in an interview, noting Islamists as well as
   right-wing groups are profiting from the health crisis.

   "Our worry is for the future, when we come out of this COVID period
   with many more people [filling public spaces]," and rising questions
   and dissatisfaction with government handling of the crisis, van Gemert
   said.

   All of this, he added, could lead "to more violence, extremism and
   potential terrorism."

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