Court TV: Critics say French anti-terrorism magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguière’s taste for the limelight leads to government abuse of antiterror laws. Stephane de Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images

In 1988, the FBI invited Alain Marsaud, then France’s top antiterrorist magistrate, to speak about terrorism to the bureau’s new recruits at its academy in Quantico, Virginia.

Marsaud, now a conservative lawmaker, told the audience of would-be feds of the deadly threat that radical Islamist terrorist networks posed to Western societies. His talk was an unmitigated flop. “They thought we were Martians,” recalls Marsaud, who chairs the French Parliament’s domestic security commission. “They were interested in neo-Nazis and green activists, and that was it.”

Marsaud’s experience goes to show just how far Washington has come. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the United States has moved swiftly to overhaul its counterterrorism policy, and has hit some bumps in the road. The recent revelation that President George W. Bush mandated domestic spying has caused a political uproar, even among Republicans. Yet questions of spying, security, civil liberties, and privacy are not new to France, which found itself in the cross hairs of Middle Eastern terrorists well before the United States did. France was the first to uncover a plot to crash a jetliner into a landmark building (the Eiffel Tower)—a chilling preview of the 9/11 attacks. It was the first to face the reality that its own citizens could become assets of Islamist terrorist groups, long before British nationals bombed the London Underground last July. As a result, it has continuously adapted its judicial system and intelligence services to the terrorist threat that it faces.

Like most European countries, France favors a judicial approach over the U.S.-style “war on terror.” But the French blend of aggressive prosecution, specialized investigators, and intrusive law enforcement is unique in Europe. And though the policy has gone through trial and error, the early warning helped fashion what has proven to be a fairly successful—though controversial—counterterrorist response.

French Domestic Legion

France’s early awareness of the terrorist threat grew out of experience rather than prescience. France was the first Western country struck on its soil by state-sponsored terrorism from the Middle East. France had been hit by terrorist attacks linked to the war in Algeria in the 1950s and to Palestinian groups in the 1970s. But, much like the United States on the morning of 9/11, France was caught largely unprepared when a series of deadly attacks shook Paris in the mid-1980s. The new terror wave, allegedly ordered by Iran and Syria, involved a geopolitical dimension that the antiquated French police and justice systems were in no position to counter. That prompted the adoption in 1986 of a comprehensive antiterrorism law, which set up a centralized unit of investigating magistrates in Paris—led by Marsaud and later by judge Jean-Louis Bruguière—with jurisdiction over all terrorism cases. Unlike normal French criminal proceedings, terrorist trials in France are judged only by panels of professional magistrates, without the participation of juries.

In the French system, an investigating judge is the equivalent of an empowered U.S. prosecutor. The judge is in charge of a secret probe, through which he or she can file charges, order wiretaps, and issue warrants and subpoenas. The conclusions of the judge are then transmitted to the prosecutor’s office, which decides whether to send the case to trial. The antiterrorist magistrates have even broader powers than their peers. For instance, they can request the assistance of the police and intelligence services, order the preventive detention of suspects for six days without charge, and justify keeping someone behind bars for several years pending an investigation. In addition, they have an international mandate when a French national is involved in a terrorist act, be it as a perpetrator or as a victim. As a result, France today has a pool of specialized judges and investigators adept at dismantling and prosecuting terrorist networks.

By contrast, in the U.S. judicial system, the evidence gathered by prosecutors is laid out during the trial, in what in effect amounts to a make-or-break gamble. A single court, the “secret” panel of 11 judges, established by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) more than two decades ago, is charged with reviewing wiretap requests by U.S. authorities. If suspects are spied on without permission in the interest of urgency, the authorities have 72 hours to file for retroactive authorization. The Bush administration’s recourse to extrajudicial means—military trials, enemy combatants—partly stems from an assessment that the judicial system is unfit to prosecute the shadowy world of terrorism. The disclosures that the Bush administration skirted the rules to eavesdrop on terrorism suspects at home is apparently the latest instance of the government’s deciding that rules protecting civil liberties are hampering the war on terror. French police and intelligence services, in contrast, operate in a permissive wiretapping system. In addition to judicially ordered taps, there are also “administrative wiretaps” decided by security agencies under the control of the government. Although the French have had their own cases of abuse—evidence has exposed illegal spying by the François Mitterrand government in the 1980s—the intrusive police powers are for the most part well known by the public and thus largely accepted, especially when it comes to national security.