In a trenchant letter addressed to the head of the gendarmerie, a military force charged with police duties, soldiers of the GIGN special operations unit expressed contempt for their commanding officer, Colonel Hubert Bonneau. It said the colonel’s failure to dispatch the GIGN to the Bataclan, where three gunmen slaughtered 90 people on November 13 last year, had “traumatised” the majority of the 400-strong force. “Colonel Bonneau quite simply forgot to be a gendarme. We are ashamed of him and we are ashamed of ourselves,” the letter said. “While we were standing by with about 40 people, ready to stop the killings, the colonel waited until he was summoned.” The Bataclan operation was eventually carried out by special police forces rather than the soldiers of the gendarmerie. There was a lack of coordination between police and soldiers in responding to the attacks, it emerged from the parliamentary inquiry. The letter, written in the name of a group of soldiers styling themselves “L’Esprit de l’Inter’ — or Spirit of Intervention — was published in the weekly newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné. It was unclear how many gendarmes supported the sentiments expressed in the letter, widely reported in French media. Officers who declined to be named told the AFP news agency that it was the work of “a handful of discontents”.
French authorities have identified the mastermind behind the November 13 last year Paris attacks, after it emerged that the man previously believed to have led the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was merely a coordinator. Although neither the name nor location of the real leader have been made public, security forces are actively trying to capture him.