Latest al-Qaeda tape made France a target: report

[tocqueville]

Thu Sep 14, 4:58 AM ET

PARIS (Reuters) - Deputy al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has urged a militant Algerian Islamist group to punish "Crusader nation" France, even though it vehemently opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq, a newspaper said on Thursday.

The Le Figaro daily cited a security expert who had reviewed the entire tape, released on Monday, in which Zawahiri called on the Algerian GSPC group to become "a bone in the throat of the American and French crusaders."

He also urged the GSPC -- the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat -- to sow fear "in the hearts of the traitors and the apostate sons of France" and to crush the "pillars of the Crusader alliance."

......


But Anne Giudicelli, head of the Terrorist security consultancy and who reviewed the whole tape, told Le Figaro the anti-France message had dominated the homepage of the Internet website used by the GSPC for the past few days.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060914/wl_nm/security_france_dc

[patcox2]

1. If a French landmark were harmed, we would get a lesson.

On how to do things right. The French do have balls, and an effective military and intelligence agency.

[dipsydoodle]

2. Statue of Liberty

is a French landmark. :)

[Truthiness Inspector]

3. French DUers

Have any of you heard any more about this today, and what are the general reactions?

[tocqueville]

4. it made the one of the major headnews in the media

and some TV debates with experts organized. The general/official reaction is "it can happen, we take it seriously". BTW it has ALREADY happened 1995. So most of the people is "taking it the way it comes". People are just expecting that the authorities are doing their job.

To give you an idea, around 400 Islamists have been arrested in France since 2001. Around 150 have been tried and convicted. Some still sit in jail, some have been deported while being foreigners. About 20 plots have been foiled and out of them at least 5 could have had devastating consequences (like the the Madrid or London bombings). In my hometown (not Paris) a network was dismantled early this year. Several people were arrested and weapons, explosives, detonators and chemicals were found. I mean 1000% more proofs than for example the latest London plot. It hardly made any headlines. And I think it's a conscious policy not to give publicity, because terrorists thrive on publicity, the aim being to create terror in people's minds.


copy of a post in a similar thread :

nothing new here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_8969

On December 24, 1994, at Algiers, Algeria, four men dressed in Air Algerie uniforms boarded Air France Flight 8969 bound to depart for Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris at 11:15. Immediately the terrorists demanded that the passengers close all of the window shutters and empty their personal belongings into a black plastic bag. Twenty five year old Abdul Abdullah Yahia and three other members of the Armed Islamic Group (Groupe Islamique Armé, or GIA) brandished their AK-47, Uzi, automatic weapons and demanded cooperation from the 220 passengers and 12 flight crew.
...............

After nearly forty hours of intense negotiations and the loss of three lives, the Algerian Colonel gave in and removed the mobile staircase and wheel chocks at 02:00 the morning of 26th. The negotiation team decided to divert the flight to Marseille International Airport, some five hundred miles south of Paris. Air traffic controllers in the tower secretly communicated to the crew of Flight 8969 to tell the hijackers that they didn't have enough fuel to make it all the way to Paris. The French forces left Spain and landed just twenty minutes before 8969 touched down at Marseille-Marignane Airport on the coast of France just after 03:30. Tired from the two day stand off, the hijackers maintained radio silence until late morning when the terrorists demand they receive nearly 27 tons of fuel; considerably more than the 9 needed to make the five hundred mile flight to Paris. It was believed that the hijackers wanted as much fuel as possible, making the Airbus into a flying bomb and that the GIA planned to either fly the plane into the Eiffel Tower in Paris or blow it up over the city.
....................


The ensuing firefight injured eleven commandos, thirteen passengers and three members of the crew. The hijackers were all shot dead. The gunfire was so fierce that the co-pilot of the Airbus jumped out of the cockpit window to the concrete twenty-five feet below, breaking his leg. The GIGN deployed all of the emergency escape chutes to allow the people to evacuate the aircraft during the firefight that lasted nearly twenty minutes that at last left the four hijackers dead. When all was said and done, all remaining passengers and GIGN members survived.
____________________________________________________________________________
a serie of bombings followed then in France since the leaders were shot or arrested

so been there, down that. The results was the building of a very efficient anti-terrorist intelligence (due to France's infiltration's capabilities) one of the main (if not the main) resources for the CIA. And all this was 7 years before 9/11