RI Embassy bombing puzzles French police
RI Embassy bombing puzzles French police
Pierre-Antoine Souchard, Associated Press/Paris
A mysterious group that claimed responsibility for a bombing at
the Indonesian Embassy here made an array of demands before the
blast that included the withdrawal of a French law banning Muslim
head scarves in schools, judicial officials said.
Friday's 5 a.m. (10 a.m in Jakarta) explosion outside the
Indonesian mission left 10 people injured by a spray of glass
shards, punched a small crater into the sidewalk and puzzled
police.
An e-mail signed by an unknown group calling itself the Armed
French Islamic Front received later on Friday demanded the
release of two Islamic extremists, Boualem Bensaid and Smain Ait
Ali Belkacem - both serving life sentences for deadly bombings in
Paris in 1995. It also demanded a ban on publications "aimed at
sabotaging Islam in France," judicial officials said on Saturday.
The authors of the message said they would maintain a cease-
fire until Jan. 30, after which "we will take new actions
bloodier than ever in France," the newspaper Le Monde quoted the
e-mail as saying.
Investigators were skeptical about the message even though the
same group also sent e-mails at the beginning of October
containing a series of demands, judicial sources said, speaking
on condition they not be named.
Besides asking that the two extremists be freed from jail, it
demanded that France withdraw its law banning Muslim head scarves
and other conspicuous religious symbols from public schools. An
Iraqi militant group holding two French journalists hostage since
Aug. 20 has made the same demand.
The e-mail also demanded that France support Turkey's entry
into the European Union.
Investigators were trying to identify the senders of the e-
mails, addressed to the police of the 16th district, where the
Indonesian Embassy is located. The claim for the bombing also was
sent to a publishing house, television and radio broadcasters.
Authorities tightened security around embassies following the
blast, which damaged a wall of the mission, broke windows in the
neighborhood and damaged cars in the vicinity.
Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin has said there were no
"specific threats" to the Indonesian Embassy.
Investigators surmise that the bomb was contained in a metal
box and a knapsack, the newspapers Liberation and Le Monde
reported.
The bombing was the first in Paris in nearly a decade and the
first known attack since 1975 on Indonesian interests outside
that country - the world's most populous Muslim nation.
However, previous attacks in France by Islamic extremists were
clearly meant to kill, while the embassy bombing - at an hour
when the streets were empty - was not.
The last major terrorist attacks in the French capital
occurred when Paris was hit by a wave of deadly subway bombings
in 1995 and 1996 - mainly the work of Algerian radicals,
including Bensaid and Belkacem. In 1997, a small bomb went off
outside a Paris mosque, slightly injuring one person.
Friday's blast came four days before the second anniversary of
the terror bombing at nightclubs in Bali, Indonesia, blamed on
the al-Qaeda-allied Jamaah Islamiyah group. That attack killed
202 people, mostly foreign tourists.
On Sept. 9, Jamaah Islamiyah suicide bombers detonated a car
bomb outside Australia's Embassy in Indonesia, killing nine
people.
Indonesia has jailed more than 150 Muslim militants over the
past two years. However, there have been no signs of Indonesian
radicals on French soil.