Quit sports? Avoiding baguettes? French guide on how to spot radicalism

France released a poster listing telltale signs to help people identify friends or family members who could be radicalised.

The French interior ministry published a poster on January 30, 2015 alerting people to watch for tell-tale signs that friends or family members are being radicalised. The billboard-style ad is titled Show more

Paris // You know someone who has suddenly stopped swimming? Have they changed their eating habits? Or are they perhaps shunning loved ones? The French government is now warning those may be signs they are radicalising.

Three weeks after France was ravaged by a terror rampage as three extremists shot and killed 17 people, the interior ministry is stepping up its campaign against home-grown insurgents. The ministry on Friday published a poster alerting people to watch for telltale signs that friends or family members are being radicalised

The billboard-style ad is titled in capitals, “JIHADIST RADICALISATION — THE FIRST WARNING SIGNS.” The poster has nine pictograms including a crossed-out baguette captioned “They’re changing their eating habits” and a swimmer with a cross superimposed carrying the words “They’re stopping sports.” The ad provides a hotline to call to identify such people.

The campaign shows just how the attacks have affected the French psyche, bringing a siege mentality to the government’s actions. “France is in a moment like the US was post 9/11 and it’s hard to know where it will end,” Sefen Guez Guez, a lawyer dealing with a post-attacks case, said. “There is a state of collective hysteria.”

The country was hit by three separate attacks this month, starting with the killing of 12 people at the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo on January 7.

The new rules included a special hotline for families and relatives who want to warn the state about a child or family member they believe is prepared to wage religious war.

“Incitement” and “defence of terrorism” were already criminal offences. The November law fast-tracks court rulings — sometimes within a week.

Now the crackdown is being taken to a new level.

Police in Nice questioned an 8-year-old boy and his father this week on suspicion of “defending terrorism” after the principal of his primary school reported that he said “he was on the side of the terrorists” during a classroom discussion.

“The spirit of the law has been hijacked since the attacks,” said Guez Guez, who’s representing the boy. “An 8- year-old is not what France is after.”

* Bloomberg News