Posted on 01/07/2004 7:59:24 PM PST by Destro
Posted on Tue, Jan. 06, 2004
Imam and Father of a Guantanamo Bay Detainee and 7 Others Held French Chechen Terrorist Crackdown
Father of Guantanamo Bay Detainee Held
JEAN-BAPTISTE LABEUR
Associated Press
LYON, France - An Islamic cleric whose son is being held at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was among seven people detained by French security agents Tuesday as part of an investigation into suspected terror networks.
The imam, Chellali Benchellali, was arrested at his home in the tough Minguettes high-rise neighborhood of Venissieux, a suburb of the southeastern city of Lyon, said a lawyer for the family.
Attorney Jacques Debray said the imam's wife and one of his sons, Hafid, also were detained in the sweep by the DST, France's secretive counterterrorism and counterintelligence agency.
Another of his sons, Mourad Benchellali, is among six French detainees suspected of ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network who are being held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay.
French agents Tuesday also arrested another imam, Mourad Merabet, who runs a pharmacy at the Minguettes, and Abdelwahed Regad, a 27-year-old quality controller at a Muslim abattoir, said friends and neighbors.
Police confirmed that five people were detained in Venissieux and said another two were arrested elsewhere in the Lyon region. There were no immediate details about the last two.
Some of those detained are believed to have provided logistical support, possibly including false papers, to suspected terrorists, police said, without providing further details.
About 100 people, some wearing scarves over their faces, protested in Venissieux against the arrests later Tuesday. Some shouted: "We are treated like animals" and "We are in the basement of France."
The arrests were ordered by anti-terror magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere, who has been using his sweeping powers of detention and investigation to probe suspected links between Islamic militants in France and rebels in Russia's breakaway, largely Muslim republic of Chechnya.
Bruguiere has previously said that the volatile Caucasus region, including Chechnya and Georgia, has become a training ground for Islamic militants who return to Europe to conduct attacks after being taught how to use chemical weapons and other arms.
A third son of the imam, Menad Benchellali, was picked up in the Paris region during a sweep a year ago that authorities said thwarted planned bomb or toxic gas attacks in France and Russia by a terror cell with ties to Chechen rebels and al-Qaida.
The December 2002 raids in the Paris suburbs of Romainville and La Courneuve turned up diagrams of chemical formulas for explosives and a substance that could make toxic gas, judicial officials said at the time.
Counterterrorism agents also found electronic components, a suit against chemical and biological attacks and radiation, two empty gas canisters and false identity papers.
French authorities have said that Menad Benchellali trained with Chechen rebels and met high-level al-Qaida operatives in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, which borders Chechnya.
The apple doe not fall far from the tree I guess. Like Father Like Son - two turds, both alike, just in bowls in different locations, but both headed down the sewer drain.
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My post from Wednesday, February 05, 2003: FOXNEWS Special Report With Brit Hume: What Is France Nervous About? (The Balkan Connection)
MANSOOR IJAZ, FOX FOREIGN AFFAIRS ANALYST: IJAZ: Exactly right. Because now al Qaeda has reduced itself to carrying all if its messages and all the most dangerous things that it does by hand carriage, if you will, by hand messengers.
Now, that is where we come back to what President Bush said in October of last year when he identified a senior al Qaeda leader who had gone to Iraq, received medical treatment to have a leg amputated that was blown up in the Afghan bombing campaign and then proceeded to a northern Iraqi terrorist outfit. What we have not yet heard and this is what my sources are telling me over the past two or three days, is that that leader was in fact, transported through southern Turkey using Albanian mercenaries to transport him into...
BRIT HUME, HOST: What is his name, by the way?
IJAZ: Abu Masab al-Zawkawi. He was transported through southern Turkey into the Balkans and then ended up in Paris sometime just before Ramadan started...
HUME: Last fall?
IJAZ: ... in 2002, last fall.
Now, the thing that is the most important about this is that when they uncovered the cells in Paris two weeks ago, in the apartment where they uncovered those cells, they found traces of ricin. And those traces of ricin are linked directly to this man Zawkawi.
HUME: These are al Qaeda cells?
IJAZ: These are al Qaeda cells run by Algerian operatives, who are then responsible for going and giving it to the London cell, to the Barcelona cell, to the Milan cell.
Can't be true. We all know there's no link between Iraq and al Qaeda or terrorism.
They have 148 dead already...the 'black boxes' from the downed flight are way to deep to be retrieved, uh huh!
Chellali Benchellali!!!!!!!!
It will be a mutt from the pound.:)
It won't be long before western europe will call on NATO to commence bombing France for this act reminiscent of ethnic cleansing.
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