Cher Monsieur Duray... since you're well versed in French, let me do you a favor --let me decipher the following news for you:
Bomb plot threatens rail system in France
Elaine Sciolino/NYT
Thursday, March 4, 2004
Unknown terrorists demand E4 million in blackmail scheme
PARIS In a blackmail plot against the French state, an unknown terrorist entity has threatened to explode bombs throughout the French rail system unless more than E4 million, or $5 million, is paid in ransom, Interior Ministry and other officials said Wednesday.
The threats were contained in letters sent to both President Jacques Chirac of France and his law-and-order Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, since mid-December. The letters were signed AZF, a signature that has mystified investigators, who do not even know whether the blackmailer is an individual or a group. AZF is also the name of a chemical factory that blew up in the southern city of Toulouse on Sept. 21, 2001, killing 30 people and injuring about 1,000. French investigators said that the explosion was an industrial accident, but it sparked an enormous outcry at the time. The police said they saw no link between the factory and the group.
The plot, which senior law enforcement and intelligence officials describe as extremely serious, has traumatized the French government, the state-run rail system and the police. One letter has already led police officers to find and detonate a sophisticated bomb.
"All of the police and gendarme services are mobilized in this affair," said a statement from the Interior Ministry Wednesday. "They are seeking to unravel it with one sole imperative: the security of France."
Sarkozy later told reporters, "We know nothing of this group but we are taking the threat seriously."
To ease commuters' fears about the safety of the railway system, 10,000 French rail workers on Wednesday began an on-foot search for bombs along the country's entire 32,000 kilometers, or 20,000 miles, of train track.
France on Wednesday raised its terrorism alert level from yellow to orange in airports and train stations, but not subways or bus stations. A judicial investigation has been opened under the authority of Jean-Louis Bruguiere, the country's most senior antiterrorism investigatory judge.
"If safety was not assured, we would not run the trains," Louis Gallois, the SNCF chairman, told journalists.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Grenoble train station was evacuated for an hour after police received a telephone bomb threat, a false alarm from someone claiming to be linked to the AZF. The AZF has described itself as a "pressure group with a terrorist character," according to the Interior Ministry's statement. In one letter in February, AZF announced that a series of bombs programmed to explode at certain times had been laid in the railway system and demanded a ransom of E4 million to stop them, a senior intelligence official said.
As a sign of good faith, AZF demanded that French authorities place an advertisement in the personals section of the left-leaning daily Liberation that said: "My big wolf, don't take useless risks. The earliest will be the best. Give me your instructions. Suzy." The ministry complied with the request, the official added.
AZF responded the next day with the exact GPS coordinates of a surprisingly sophisticated, two-kilogram bomb, Interior Ministry and intelligence officials said.
The device was made with a nitrate-fuel mixture, a detonator and timing system set in a round Tupperware-like container. It was found under a railroad bridge near the central French town of Folles about 32 kilometers from Limoges on the Paris-Toulouse line. It was detonated by the police. Sarkozy said that the bomb "proved to be dangerous" because it shattered a rail track during the detonation. But a second bomb scheduled to go off on Feb. 18 did not, according to the edition of Le Monde that appeared Wednesday afternoon.
AZF also asked the ministry to land a helicopter on the roof of the Montparnasse tower, the tallest office building in Paris, to prove that the government was ready to follow instructions. But the operation was too complicated to carry out.
In a telephone call last Monday, a woman told the police that the ransom sum had changed to a total of $5.2 million - 1 million in euros and 4 million in dollars - and that a helicopter should drop the ransom money on a plastic tarpaulin on a field near the town of Montargis, 100 kilometers south of Paris. But the flight was at night, the visibility was poor and the agents were unable to locate the spot.
French investigators have ruled out the possibility of international terrorism by a radical Islamic or Chechen group, two senior officials involved in the investigation said in telephone interviews. The officials said that the letters seem to indicate that the individual or group has anarchist or extreme left-wing or right-wing tendencies.
At least one of the letters contained a condemnation of French politicians, called the economy corrupt and the educational system backward, a senior French official said.
The New York Times
iht.com
Analysis: That AZF outfit is a hoax craftily made up by French intelligence, namely, the DST and the RG... It allows French authorities to kill two birds with one stone:
Bird #1: the French are sending the message --to whom it may concern-- that AZF was terrorism and not a mere accident as the official story purported it to be... Of course, the gist of the message is that France will not cave in to Judeofascist terrorists who have targeted French facilities and/or civilians ever since 911. To name but a few: the blowup of the chemical plant AZF in Toulouse, shortly after 911 itself; the killing of eleven DCN engineers in Karachi; and lately, the bombing/sabotaging of a Flash airliner off Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt (over 140 French fatalities)...
As you can see, unlike its racist, Arabophobic, Judeofascist US counterpart (FBI, CIA, Homeland,...), French intelligence doesn't pin the rap on "Al-Qaeda" or some other Islamic subsidiary --quite the contrary: French intelligence rules out any Arab/Muslim connection!!
Bird #2: the whole ploy allows the French to test/drill security across its 20,000-miles-wide railway network --still a weak spot in terms of anti-terrorist measures.
Bottom line: the message to would-be Judeofascist terrorists is, DON'T MESS WITH US.
Then again, I told you so:
Message 19842512 |
