French interior minister in Turkey after jihadist suspect gaffe
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve visited Turkey on Friday after a parliamentary committee cleared French security services of responsibility for three suspected jihadists walking free after they were transferred by Turkish police.
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The French parliament's intelligence committee found that French security services were not to blame for the fact that three men arrested in Turkey and deported to France arrived at the wrong airport on Tusday and walked free before handing themselves in the following day.
But its members also called for better exchanges of information with foreign countries.
Cazeneuve met Turkish Interior Minister Elfkin Ala in Ankara on Friday.
Blaming a "lack of communication" between the two countries for the events, which aroused derision in opposition quarters, he annouunced that he had "made some proposals to my Turkish counterpart".
On Thursday Cazeneuve admitted that the police's centralised information system had broken down and needs updating but said it was not the main reason for the gaffe.
"The primary failing was a lack of coordination between France and Turkey," he told Europe 1 radio.
At the moment French officials are not allowed to go to the passenger gates because Turkey, as a sovereign state, will not allow it.
And he explained that border police cannot make arrests in such cases, the task being the province of the internal security service (DGSI).
"Every week, the DGSI arrests people about to leave to join the jihad or about to commit crimes," he said. "In recent months 70 cases were opened against 350 French nationals, 70 were prosecuted and 51 sentenced," he said.
But Friday's Le Monde newspaper reported that the Air France pilots' strike had some effect on the arrest fiasco.
Originally the three suspected jihadists - Imad Djebali, Gael Maurize and Abdelouahed Baghdali - had been arrested in Turkey and deported for violation of the right of residence, meaning that it was up to the Turkish authorities to decide when and on which flight they should fly back to France.
The alleged jihadists were due to fly to Paris on Tuesday on an Air France flight but, because of the strike, Turkish officials sent them on a Turkish airline to Marseille, Le Monde says.
But they failed to inform the French authorities, leaving DGSI agents waiting for them at Paris's Orly airport.
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