Implications for the American Fourth Amendment — a terrorist under French house arrest — murdered Father Jacques Hamel at mass in Normandy, France

© 2016 Peter Free

27 July 2016

 

Even a determined Fourth Amendment advocate like me — thinks that the French screwed this one up

Does preserving freedom require us to be boneheads?

Yesterday, alleged terrorist Adel Kermiche and two buddies murdered Father Jacques Hamel (an 85-year old Catholic priest) as he celebrated mass.

Ludicrously, Kermiche was awaiting trial on charges allegedly related to his two attempts to get into Syria.  Even more unbelievably, he was supposed to be wearing an electronic monitor, so that authorities could keep tabs on him.

Obviously something went awry:

 

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Kermiche first came to the attention of anti-terror officials when a family member alerted he was missing in March 2015. German officials arrested him and found he was using his brother’s identity in a bid to travel to Syria.

He was released under judicial supervision, but in May fled to Turkey where he was again arrested and returned to France. He was then held in custody until March this year.

Kermiche was released and fitted with an electronic bracelet, which allowed him to leave his house on weekdays between 8:00 am and 12:30 pm, Molins said.

Tuesday’s attack prompted renewed opposition calls to further harden France’s anti-terrorism legislation.

But Socialist President Francois Hollande — who faces a tough re-election bid next year — rejected them, saying: “Restricting our freedoms will not make the fight against terrorism more effective.”

[T]he deputy chief of France’s police union, Frederic Lagache, said: “It should not be possible for someone awaiting trial on charges of having links to terrorism to be released” on house arrest.

© 2016 Agence France Presse, France aims to ease religious fears after church attack, Business Insider (27 July 2016) (extracts)

 

The moral? — Stupidity eventually kills everything in its path

If someone:

 

(a) seeks to go to a terrorist-controlled area,

(b) under circumstances in which one could reasonably conclude that he was intending to bring violent tumult back with him —

(c) Government should have the capacity to deny him freedom upon his return, while it

(d) speedily proceeds with a legal case against him.

 

What complicates this common sense in a free society is Government’s often totalitarian wish to keep everything it knows and does secret.

In practice, people tend either to:

 

(a) get locked up forever on no evidence — the American Guantanamo way,

or

(b) go free to do whatever they will — evidently the French way.

 

Now that we have these two Poles of Stupidity identified, perhaps we could do something sensible in between?