French Terrorist Chief Warns of New Attacks, Possibly Cyanide
Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2001
The man who hunted down and jailed Carlos the Jackal, the world's most notorious terrorist, is now warning that the U.S. faces a deadly threat from terrorists now operating undetected in this country.
Jean-Louis Bruguiere, France's chief anti-terrorism judge, told journalist Christophe Calais that well-concealed terrorists cells in the U.S. could easily use cyanide to poison water supplies here.
Writing in Saturday's New York Times, Calais revealed that the French terrorism expert warned that neither the destruction of the Taliban nor even the capture of Osama bin Laden would end the threat of terrorism. Newer terrorist networks, he told Calais, are unlike those of the past, which "had a loose but identifiable hierarchy and structure."
"I am very anxious," Bruguiere told the Times. "There are many autonomous cells in Europe and North America we do not know about.
"They do not need orders from Osama bin Laden to carry out the jihad. They finance their own operations with credit card fraud and theft. The threat, even with Osama bin Laden gone, is very high.
"These groups are protean; they change their shape like the AIDS virus. The way they communicate or carry out one operation is not the way they carry out the next one. And many of them, especially those associated with the group known as the Takfiris, are so integrated into Western society, even eating pork, drinking and wearing Western clothes as a cover, that they are almost impossible to discover beforehand."
He described the Takfiris as "a radical sect that traces its origins back to Egypt in the 1960s. Fiercely devoted to destroying those they see as the enemies of Islam, they are willing to adopt local customs to blend in with foreigners."
The French expert believes that Mohamed Atta, ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, was a member of the group, which stays away from Islamic mosques and instead does its worshipping in apartments, making it much harder to detect and monitor.
The movement, he said, is "the most dangerous because it rejects the authenticity of even other Islamic groups and thinks it alone knows the truth."
The next terrorist attack may not be anything like those of the past, he said.
"We know terrorists were trained in Afghanistan in the use of chemical and biological weapons," he said, "although they do not have nuclear weapons. We have seen evidence of planning for poisoning water supplies, including with cyanide. It would be very easy and very hard to prevent."
According to the Times, Bruguiere hunted down the Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sanchez, known as Carlos the Jackal, in Sudan in 1994. Sanchez, who is blamed for murdering 83 victims, was tried in France and given a life sentence.
Bruguiere, the Times says, is one of the world's most effective and well-informed anti-terrorism officials with scores of arrests and convictions to his credit.
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