| Submit your comments on this article |
| Europe |
| French terror cell linked to Chechen Killer Korps |
| 2005-12-13 |
| The French police announced Monday that they had arrested more than 20 people, including Islamic militants and petty criminals, in the Paris area who were believed to have been plotting terrorist acts in France. A police statement described the arrests as "an important operation aimed at dismantling an Islamist network linked to a terrorist enterprise." The police have not yet determined whether the group had precise plans for a terrorist attack. But they found it worrisome that the group included a blend of militant Islamists and petty criminals who were apparently committing common crimes as a way to raise money for terrorism, an intelligence official from the D.S.T. domestic intelligence service said. Some of the suspects have criminal records, for charges including armed robbery and the possession of false documents, the intelligence official said. "This was a rather important and rather worrying operation," the official said. "Some of them were very experienced thieves and armed robbers who intended to use the money for terrorist activities. They represented a concrete danger." The official declined to be identified because it would violate the rules of his agency. Most of the suspects arrested in predawn raids in several towns in the Paris region were Tunisian or Algerian, or French citizens of North African descent. The operation, which had been planned for several weeks, was conducted jointly by the D.S.T., detectives from France's organized crime unit and members of the police paramilitary force known as RAID, under the instructions of France's leading antiterrorist magistrate, Jean-Louis BruguiÚre. Among those arrested was Ouassini Cherifi, a French computer specialist of Algerian descent from a Paris suburb who served two years in prison and was released in 2004. He had been convicted of trafficking in false documents, including French passports, to facilitate the movement of militants to Afghanistan from Thailand via Pakistan several years ago. It was not known whether the arrests had been timed before Christmas as a warning to would-be terrorists. French officials consider the Christmas season a period of especially high alert for terrorism. The police have not determined whether the group was trying to help move foreign fighters to Iraq, although the intelligence official said some of them appeared to be linked to a network of individuals helping the insurgency against the Russians in Chechnya. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |