French police have seized large quantities of military weapons and explosives as part of a probe into an Islamic militant group said to have indirect links to al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, officials said on Thursday.
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters the arsenal was discovered on Wednesday in a lock-up attached to a block of flats in the Clichy-sous-Bois suburb north of Paris.
Judicial sources said the haul included assault rifles, dynamite and TNT.
Police also arrested on Wednesday two new suspects in addition to the 25 rounded up in a string of dawn raids in the Paris area on Monday.
Investigators believe the gang financed Islamic militancy by staging armed robberies and judicial sources said one suspect had admitted planning one such robbery in Beauvais, north of Paris, in October.
Sarkozy told parliament this week that those detained had indirect links to key al Qaeda leaders and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the organisation's leader in Iraq.
"Thanks to the arrests, an arms cache has just been discovered which reveals the seriousness of this matter. They are very determined people, with links between terrorist extremism and major crime," Sarkozy told BFM TV.
"We think they have indirect links, at a fairly high level, with al Qaeda," he said.
Four people have been released but police are still holding 23 people in custody on suspicion of terrorism-related offences.
They include Ouassini Cherifi, 30, who has just served a five-year jail term for trafficking forged passports used by armed militants.
Anti-terrorism magistrates are expected to place around 15 of the suspects under formal investigation on Friday. They must then be bailed or remanded in custody by a judge.
Judicial sources are cautious about the Zarqawi connection. So far, they have only linked the latest group to another disbanded by police in October and November. It was allegedly run by Safe Bourada, a French national implicated in a wave of Islamist attacks in France in 1995.
It is Bourada's group that has been linked to the GSPC, a militant Algerian Islamist group which western intelligence services say has contacts with Zarqawi.
The tough-talking Sarkozy, who wants to run for president in 2007, is steering a major anti-terrorism bill through parliament.
It sharply increases the use of closed circuit television surveillance, monitoring of mobile phone and Internet cafe connections and tougher sentencing for terrorism offences.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
12/16/2005 00:32 ||
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#1
what about Australia? Chances are they have the same gear.
Garzon's been busy ...
Another Islamic fundamentalist unit, allegedly funding terrorism, was rounded up on the Costa del Sol by Civil Guards in the early hours of Friday morning last week. According to investigators the gang members had passed on âthousands of eurosâ to terrorists belonging to the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat. These sums of money, which came largely from burglaries in luxury mansions on the Costa del Sol, were earmarked for financing Al Qaeda groups in North Africa.
The operation, dubbed âGreenâ, started a year ago and ended last Friday with seven people under arrest - five Algerians, one Kosovar Albanian and a Spanish woman - in the El Perchel and Churriana districts of Malaga, in Torremolinos, Benalmádena, Estepona, Monda and Marbella.
Anti-terrorism sources revealed that in the last year alone the unit had âamassed vast sums of moneyâ and jewellery that had been sent to Algeria. The Minister explained that the gang sent large amounts of cash to Al Qaeda bases in North Africa using a âcomplicated system of bank transfersâand that these funds included amounts for terrorist groups in both Mauritania and Libya. Sums of money were even sent to the taliban in Afghanistan. The sources explained that on occasions the gang members even gave money in large denomination banknotes of 500 euros to an Algerian cleric. The Minister added that this unit was identical to the one broken up in Alicante and Granada on November 23rd. In that case four people were sent to prison.
The gang members arrested were taken to Madrid where they gave statements to the National Court on Monday. They all denied the charges against them.On Tuesday three of the seven, all Algerians, were sent to prison without bail by the judge, charged with collaborating with an armed gang. A fourth, also Algerian, was allowed bail of 3,000 euros. The rest, a Kosovar Albanian, an Algerian woman and a Spanish woman, were released on remand with charges pending and ordered to report to the court regularly.
The Minister insisted that there was no evidence that the gang was planning an immediate attack.
Investigations by Dutch police into Van Goghâs murder led to a connection between Bouyeri, alias Abu Zubair, and other Islamic activists. Homes linked to Bislam Achamedovich Ismailov and Kabez Ismailov were searched. The former was arrested in France and extradited to Holland while the latter is serving a prison sentence in Peru.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
12/16/2005 00:18 ||
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That appeasement thingy works sooo well.Doesn't it?
PARIS - French authorities deliberately suppressed information about the spread of radioactive fallout from the May 1986 Chernobyl disaster over France, according to details of an expertsâ report leaked on Thursday.
Two independent physicists say in the report that the state-run Central Service for Protection against Radioactive Rays (SCPRI) knew of high levels of contamination in Corsica and southeastern France but kept the details under wraps. The study was commissioned by magistrate Marie-Odile Bertella-Geffroy, who since 2001 has been examining allegations that the atomic cloud from Chernobyl caused a surge in cases of thyroid cancer in parts of France.
This week Bertella-Geffroy handed over the report -- originally completed in March -- to civil plaintiffs in the case, who passed details to AFP. âNow we have proof that there was a breakdown in the system. So now the judicial case will succeed -- I canât see how it can do otherwise,â said Chantal Hoir, president of the French Association of Victims of Thyroid Cancer.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/16/2005 00:00 ||
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So why does this show up in The Kahleej Times> None of the Frence MSM carrying AFP? Or just that no one at the 'Burg reads any Frog papers?
Just inquiring.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/16/2005 6:10 Comments ||
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Note the verbage here. Hid
Frech hid from danger.
I had a different description in mind, but maybe that's just me....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
12/16/2005 16:31 Comments ||
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Well, its not like the ministers would hide the fact that HIV infected blood was let loose in the French medical system just because they hadn't developed a French means to detect it. Now would they?
Someone threw gasoline-filled bottles Thursday at a polling station in a Stockholm suburb where Iraqi expatriates were voting in parliamentary elections. The bottles did not catch fire. Police said one man had been seen throwing them against a window but he was bravely able to escape before security guards could arrest him. A group claiming to be a Swedish branch of al-Qaida sent a letter to several media organizations in the country claiming responsibility but experts said they doubted the claim.
It does sound pretty weak, doesn't it?
Police issued an alert to other Iraqi polling stations but no further attacks were reported. Sweden has not been the target of a major terrorist attack for decades and security police said they were investigating whether a Swedish al-Qaida branch even existed. "Anyone can use the name al-Qaida, it is a marketable name," Magnus Norell, a terrorism expert at the Swedish Defense Research Institute, told television station TV4. "But I am doubtful that there are any developed cells here in Sweden." Sweden, with a large immigrant population, has more than 70,000 people of Iraqi descent, of whom 40,000 are Iraqi citizens. They voted in the capital, Stockholm, and Goteborg in the southwest.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2005 00:00 ||
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I suspect I know what happened. He stuffed rags in a bottle full of ice-cold gasoline, then lit the rags and threw the bottles against something equally frozen.
That just doesn't work. But being from a warm climate, he wouldn't know that cold gasoline is hard as heck to light.
#3
Time to amend the manual. "Pour gasoline into large saucecan, warm over medium/high heat, stir occasionally with a wooden spoon." That should fix the problem.
As viewed thru the prism of entry into the EU...(EFL) The Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party of the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has enacted a law giving mayors the power to issue drink licences and designate areas where alcohol can be consumed. Mr Erdogan insists he has shed his Islamic activist past and that his party, while conservative, respects Turkey's secular principles. But many suspect Justice and Development is secretly implementing an Islamic vision.
"Let's not be fooled," Tufan Turenc, a political commentator, wrote in the mass-circulation newspaper Hurriyet. "[Mr Erdogan's party] is slowly wrapping the Islamic blanket around us." It's not just the alcohol-free zones that are troubling secular Turks. Last month, the state-run standards institute announced it would introduce "halal" certificates for food that meets Muslim religious dietary requirements. A new women-only gym and swimming pool run by Ankara council and plans for a mosque inside an Istanbul park that is already surrounded by mosques have also caused many Turks to suspect Islamic mores are creeping into official policy.
But Mr Erdogan's party rejects such charges. "Our programme aims to improve the welfare of all," Abdullatif Sener, the deputy prime minister, said. "Our party is not one which spreads ideology."
#2
Last month, the state-run standards institute announced it would introduce "halal" certificates for food that meets Muslim religious dietary requirements. A new women-only gym and swimming pool run by Ankara council and plans for a mosque inside an Istanbul park that is already surrounded by mosques have also caused many Turks to suspect Islamic mores are creeping into official policy.
All right then, do something about it come next election cycle. If y'all don't, the assumption is that Islamic mores is what you want.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
PARIS - French authorities deliberately suppressed information about the spread of radioactive fallout from the May 1986 Chernobyl disaster over France, according to details of an expertsâ report leaked on Thursday.
A group claiming to be a Swedish branch of al-Qaida sent a letter to several media organizations in the country claiming responsibility but experts said they doubted the claim. 
The Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party of the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has enacted a law giving mayors the power to issue drink licences and designate areas where alcohol can be consumed. Mr Erdogan insists he has shed his Islamic activist past and that his party, while conservative, respects Turkey's secular principles. But many suspect Justice and Development is secretly implementing an Islamic vision. 
