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.