So called ‘lone wolf’ Islamic attackers, those Muslims who pop up now and again suffering from ‘sudden jihad syndrome’ are often painted by the media as acting on their own and with no contact with other Muslims or Islamic terror groups. However time and again following these attacks it is revealed that the attacker is linked in some way with a larger group of violent Muslims or has been imbibing Islamic propaganda telling them to go and commit acts of violence.

Following on from the attack on a Paris police headquarters that saw four people killed by a Muslim convert police employee, the immediate response of the media was to paint this attack as the work of a lone deranged person. Further information that has come out or been released shows that the attacker Michael Harpon, who was killed by police after the attack, is up to his necks in Islamic savagery and is definitely not a ‘lone wolf’.

The Metro newspaper in the UK is reporting that when police raided Harpon’s home after the attack where he lived with his Muslim wife, they found evidence that Harpon had been in contact with ISIS or a similar Islamic terror group. Police have also arrested his wife, Ilham, although the report said that she is cooperating with police despite communication being difficult as Ilham is like her late husband also profoundly deaf.

When police examined the attacker’s communication devices they found that he had had contact with a radical Islamic group. The report added that Mrs Harpon had told the police that her husband’s behaviour had become erratic prior to the attack and had been ‘hearing voices’ and having what was described as a ‘dementia attack’.

Harpon’s psychological state and the known conflicts that he had been having with his superiors at work plus the fact that he had converted to Islam, does raise questions as to the efficacy of vetting procedures in France’s security entities such as the police. This is especially the case in the light of a claim made by the Times of Israel that stated that Harpon was involved in gathering intelligence on Islamic terrorist groups and jihadist activity.

The Times of Israel said:

He (Harpon) adhered to “a radical vision of Islam” stabbed four colleagues to death. Sources said he had worked in a section of the police service dedicated to collecting information on jihadist radicalization.

This looks to me like a massive vetting failure by the French police. This individual should have rung so many alarm bells that if listened to may have both prevented this attack and may have removed a compromised individual from the intelligence area. The fact that he had a Muslim wife and had converted to Islam should have caused the police to quietly move him to a less sensitive area. That and his psychological state should have been seen by the authorities as indicating a person who should not be working on counterjihad intelligence.

The damage that Harpon may have done may go beyond these killings. Who knows what information Harpon may have passed on to jihadist groups before his knife rampage? We know that he had only been a convert to Islam for about 18 months but his treachery could date back well before that, if indeed he has been treacherous with French state information?

Harpon should have been kept well away from critical information at least from the time of his conversion to the very same ideology that commits the acts of terror that his unit was trying to stop.

That he was not should be seen as a major failure by the French government to keep out of sensitive positions those who deep down want to hurt France and its people. I would suggest that a naive desire to see all those of different faiths as being equal played some part in the monumental error of not dealing with Harpon prior to the attack. The result of this naivety is that four people are dead and French intelligence about jihadist terrorism may have been compromised. These mistakes should never ever happen again or the next time it may not be merely a single man attacking, but a whole troop of violent Islamic savages attacking French citizens.