Posted on 03/17/2004 10:34:27 AM PST by kattracks
(CNSNews.com) - Less than a week after the Madrid train bombings, France has received a letter from an unknown Islamic group threatening violent strikes unless the government withdraws a recently passed law banning Muslim headscarves in schools.
The threat, from a group calling itself the "Servants of Allah, the Powerful and Wise One," was received Tuesday by two major French daily newspapers, Le Parisien and Le Monde .
Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, to whom the letter was addressed, made the threat public in the evening. He said his government was taking the threat seriously but asked people not to panic.
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said later the letter did not "bear the marks" of "usual" Islamic extremist writings, giving the impression that he was downplaying the seriousness of the threat.
A source at the National Police said Wednesday that authorities were continuing to study the letter and would take it seriously until the full results of the analysis were available.
"We are analyzing the document for its semantics, the content of its message and by comparing it with similar documents we have received in the past," said the source.
France increased its security alert level to the second degree, orange, following the Madrid bombings last week, with a higher level, red, assigned to public transportation. It has increased patrols in train stations and airports. Authorities did not announce a further increase following the threatening letter.
The letter was signed by the "Mosvar Barayev Commando," the name of the Chechen leader who carried out the Moscow theater siege in October 2002.
It is reproduced on the Le Parisien's website and bears an Arabic letterhead. The letter threatens "to plunge France into terror and remorse and spill blood outside its borders," unless the government repeals the "hateful, discriminating and anti-Muslim" new law banning the Islamic veil.
The letter also warns French Muslims to stay away from crowded public places. France has a population of some five million Muslims, the largest in Western Europe.
An Interior Ministry source confirmed that authorities are still advising vigilance and said he did not know when the results of the analysis would become available.
While the anxious French population hoped for confirmation from the Minister of Interior that the letter was not an authentic threat, media commentators speculated that the letter could have been authored by the extreme right wing to take advantage of new security fears, or publicized early -- before authentication -- to gain political advantage for the government.
Prime Minister Raffarin said on Tuesday evening that he made the threat public because he did not want to hide anything from French citizens. This was a clear reference to Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who lost elections on Sunday because voters accused him of dishonestly playing down the Al Qaeda link to the bombings and falsely blaming Basque separatists.
France will hold regional elections on Sunday and opposition Socialist Party candidates are hoping to benefit from the surprise victory of the neighboring Spanish socialists as they challenge the center right majority party of President Jacques Chirac.
While taking the threat seriously, French authorities say they expect a surge of unsubstantiated threats as Europe accepts the fact that it is now also a target for Al Qaeda.
European Union ministers will meet on Friday to evaluate the threat to European security following the attack in Spain, and the terrorist threat will also be discussed at a regular EU meeting scheduled for next week.
The Paris subway service was slowed on Wednesday morning when bomb squads were called in to check on suspect items.
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They have otherwise failed to advance for several hundred years and now they want to blame everyone else.
They consider themselves victims as a way of denial of their own shortcomings.
Absolute balderdash!
Isamofascism is far and away more dangerous to Western Culture.
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