French strength

Marc Perelman of the Dallas Morning News reviews France's domestic anti-terror policy and notes that there are a lot of aspects of the French system that make it favorable for domestic terrorism prevention. Most notably, no walls between police and intelligence services:

France's early awareness of the terrorist threat grew out of experience rather than prescience. France was the first Western country struck on its soil by state-sponsored terrorism from the Middle East. France had been hit by terrorist attacks linked to the war in Algeria in the 1950s and to Palestinian groups in the 1970s. But, much like the United States on the morning of 9/11, France was caught largely unprepared when a series of deadly attacks shook Paris in the mid-1980s.

The new terror wave, allegedly ordered by Iran and Syria, involved a geopolitical dimension that the antiquated French police and justice systems were in no position to counter. That prompted the adoption in 1986 of a comprehensive anti-terrorism law, which set up a centralized unit of investigating magistrates in Paris – led by Mr. Marsaud and later by Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière – with jurisdiction over all terrorism cases. Unlike normal French criminal proceedings, terrorist trials in France are judged only by panels of professional magistrates, without the participation of juries.

In the French system, an investigating judge is the equivalent of an empowered U.S. prosecutor. The judge is in charge of a secret probe, through which he or she can file charges, order wiretaps and issue warrants and subpoenas. The conclusions of the judge are then transmitted to the prosecutor's office, which decides whether to send the case to trial.

The anti-terrorist magistrates have even broader powers than their peers. For instance, they can request the assistance of the police and intelligence services, order the preventive detention of suspects for six days without charge and justify keeping someone behind bars for several years pending an investigation.

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By contrast, in the U.S. judicial system, the evidence gathered by prosecutors is laid out during the trial, in what amounts to a make-or-break gamble. A single court, the "secret" panel of 11 judges, established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) more than two decades ago, is charged with reviewing wiretap requests by U.S. authorities. If suspects are spied on without permission in the interest of urgency, the authorities have 72 hours to file for retroactive authorization.