(Radio France) The special criminal court, where 20 men are being tried for their alleged involvement in the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, heard two expert witnesses on Tuesday. Hugo Micheron is a researcher who has worked on radical Islam in Syria, in French prisons and in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek; Bernard Bajolet was head of the French external intelligence service at the time of the attacks.
Hugo Micheron is an impressive young man. He teaches at Princeton in the United States, and at the Paris Institute of Political Science. His subject is radical Islam. He dislikes oversimplification.
If, for example, you think that a large immigrant population of north African origin, high unemployment and its related social problems are sufficient to explain why there were so many French volunteers in the ranks of Islamic State in Syria, Hugo Micheron will ask you to explain the poor northern suburbs of the French Mediterranean city of Marseille.
