Eric Holder says US ‘at war’ with ‘lone wolf’ terrorists after Paris attacks | World news | The GuardianEric Holder says US ‘at war’ with ‘lone wolf’ terrorists after Paris attacks | World news | The Guardian










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Charlie Hebdo attack



Eric Holder says US ‘at war’ with ‘lone wolf’ terrorists after Paris attacks









Eric Holder echoes sentiment that extremists ‘corrupt the Islamic faith’ to justify violence. US plans conference on anti-extremism on 18 February

















The US attorney general, Eric Holder, attends a press conference in Paris with other interior ministers before the mass unity rally in Paris Sunday. Photograph: Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images




Martin Pengelly in New York






@MartinPengelly





Sunday 11 January 2015 12.22 EST







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As a million people gathered in Paris to march and express solidarity in the face of Islamist terror attacks that this week killed 17 people, attorney general Eric Holder said the US was “at war” with “lone wolf” terrorists.
Holder’s comments echoed those of the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, who said on Saturday his country was at war with radical Islam. “It is a war against terrorism,” Valls said, “against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity.”
Speaking to NBC from Paris, where he was attending a counter-terrorism summit and the march, Holder said: “That is the thing that I think keeps me up most at night, this concern about the lone wolf who goes undetected.” Questioned by CNN about how the Paris attackers were known to authorities but still managed to act, he said such people “float under the radar screens”.
“I certainly think we are at war with those who would commit terrorist attacks and corrupt the Islamic faith to try to justify their terrorist actions,” he told ABC during a tour of Sunday talk shows as he led the Obama administration’s response to the attacks. “That’s who we are at war with and we are determined to take the fight to them.”
The White House said on Sunday it will host a conference on anti-extremism on 18 February. Holder said: “We will bring together all of our allies to discuss ways in which we can counteract this violent extremism that exists around the world.”
Speaking to CNN, Holder said: “We’re horrified by what happened and we express our condolences to the French people. What we saw in France over the course of this last week is unfortunately what we’re going to have to confront into the future.
“We have seen these kinds of attacks or attempts to have these kinds of attacks certainly in the United States, in the United Kingdom, we’ve seen this in Nairobi, in Australia and in Canada. This is the nature of the new threat that we must confront. We can I think successfully confront it if we share information in a way that we perhaps have not in the past.”



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Citizens carrying a giant cardboard pencil reading “Not Afraid” march to show solidarity with French citizens in the streets of Paris on Sunday.
Photograph: Charles Platiau/Reuters


On Sunday, a firebomb was thrown at the offices of a German newspaper that republished cartoons from Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine at whose offices 12 people were killed this week. Two men were detained. 
Holder deflected questions about the possible existence of “sleeper cells” of terrorists in the US, which the Senate intelligence committee member Dianne Feinstein earlier said existed “in France and in other countries and yes, even in our own”. He also refused to comment on alleged failures by French intelligence services that could have stopped the Paris attacks.
Asked if he believed the Yemen-based Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) had “ordered, co-ordinated and paid for” the Paris attacks, the group having been linked to one of the attackers on Charlie Hebdo, Holder said: “We don’t have any credible information at least as yet to indicate who was responsible, who sponsored this act.
“I will say this: AQAP remains the most dangerous of the al-Qaida cells that we are constantly focused on.”
Responsibility for the Paris attacks is not yet clear. On Sunday, a video was released in which Amedy Coulibaly, who shot dead a policewoman and four hostages in apparent co-ordination with the Charlie Hebdo attackers, before being shot dead by French police, is described as a “soldier of the caliphate”. Coulibaly appears to swear allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State militants who have taken control of large parts of Iraq and Syria and against whom US-led air strikes continue.
The British prime minister, David Cameron, is due in Washington on Thursday for a two-day meeting with President Barack Obama. The Paris attack will be among the subjects discussed. Cameron, the German chancellor Angela Merkel and many other world leaders marched in Paris on Sunday.
Speaking to ABC on Sunday, the French ambassador to the US, Gérard Araud, said the White House conference was a good idea because “in a sense, France was not attacked as France. France was attacked as a western democracy, and it could have happened everywhere in Europe, and, unfortunately, I guess, also in the US.”



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Charlie Hebdo attack




France




Obama administration




Eric Holder




US foreign policy



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Al-Qaida




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more on this story














Cherif Kouachi during 2008 terror trial: 'I've been set up' - video

File footage of one of the Paris gunmen, Cherif Kouachi, arriving at court in 2008 on charges of helping to funnel fighters to Iraq's insurgency



Published: 13 Jan 2015




Cherif Kouachi during 2008 terror trial: 'I've been set up' - video












Analysis Charlie Hebdo attackers: born, raised and radicalised in Paris

The radicalisation of the Kouachi brothers began in a picturesque park in the capital while Amédy Coulibaly took the first steps towards terrorism in prison, but what the three had in common was growing up on the margins of French society



Published: 12 Jan 2015




Charlie Hebdo attackers: born, raised and radicalised in Paris












Paris shootings: investigation launched into where gunmen got GoPro cameras

Officials try to pinpoint when and where cameras found in possession of Kouachi brothers and Amédy Coulibaly were obtained



Published: 12 Jan 2015




Paris shootings: investigation launched into where gunmen got GoPro cameras












Paris attacks: 10,000 troops deployed as France hunts for accomplices

Mobilisation of 10,000 troops to guard potentially vulnerable locations comes as prime minister warns that ‘threat still present’



Published: 12 Jan 2015




Paris attacks: 10,000 troops deployed as France hunts for accomplices














Paris shootings: Jewish school ‘likely target’ of gunman Coulibaly




Published: 12 Jan 2015




Paris shootings: Jewish school ‘likely target’ of gunman Coulibaly








Analysis Mentor of Charlie Hebdo gunmen has been UK-based




Published: 11 Jan 2015




Mentor of Charlie Hebdo gunmen has been UK-based








Paris gunman Amedy Coulibaly declared allegiance to Isis




Published: 11 Jan 2015




Paris gunman Amedy Coulibaly declared allegiance to Isis








Charlie Hebdo: a letter to my British friends

Olivier Tonneau




Published: 13 Jan 2015




Charlie Hebdo: a letter to my British friends
















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