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Posted on 01/11/2004 7:16:35 PM PST by blam
Al-Qaida terror plot foiled, say French police
Jon Henley in Paris
Monday January 12, 2004
The Guardian (UK)
The French police are convinced that their country has escaped a planned chemical or biological attack by an Islamist cell linked to al-Qaida. An interior ministry official said evidence from Islamist militants arrested in the Lyon area last week made it "very plain" that an attack with the deadly botulism or ricin toxins was being actively prepared.
The eight suspects arrested on Tuesday were mainly relatives of Menad Benchellali, the son of a radical imam in the Lyon suburb of Venisseux, who has been in jail since December 2002, when he was arrested during a police investigation of French Islamists' efforts to send young Muslim volunteers to fight the Russian forces in Chechnya.
The ministry official, who asked not to be named, confirmed a report in Le Monde that the suspects admitted to the police that Mr Benchellali was a chemicals expert who had been trained in poison-making in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and was actively trying to produce a botulism toxin and ricin.
He had tested his chemicals on animals, they said.
Mr Benchellali's arrest was said at the time to have thwarted suicide bomb attacks on Russian targets in Paris, including the embassy.
But Tuesday's arrests have proved a "goldmine" of further "unexpected but unsettling" evidence, the official said.
"After last year's arrests we thought we were dealing with a group planning bomb attacks on Russian interests, and possibly supplying false papers, money and lodgings to Chechens," an investigator said.
"It now seems a cell around the Benchellali family was trying to manufacture chemical and biological weapons for attacks around Europe."
Those arrested last week included Mr Benchellali's father, Chellali, a well-known and controversial radical imam; his mother; his brother Hafed; and his sister Anissa.
Another of his brothers, Mourad, is among six French nationals suspected of having ties to al-Qaida held by the US authorities at Guantanamo Bay.
Two women were released on Saturday, their lawyer, Jacques Debray, said, but six others were expected to be brought before the anti-terrorist magistrate, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, in Paris today.
About 150 Muslims in Venisseux protested against the arrests on Saturday. Muslim organisations asked people to gather in the market square and read a statement calling the arrests "a message to intimidate all France's Muslims".
Le Monde said the imam had admitted that he was aware of his son's chemical experiments, the products of which were stored in Nivea face cream jars and 70cl flasks and later given to a local chemist, identified only as Mourad M, for safekeeping. Several relatives had helped buy 9-10kg of ingredients.
As little as one drop of the botulism toxin released into a building's ventilation system can be fatal. Ricin is one of the deadliest poisons to occur naturally, many times deadlier than cyanide and capable of being given in food and drink without affecting the taste.
The police are investigating whether the Lyon discovery is related to the British anti-terrorism police's seizure of ricin in a flat above a chemist's shop in north London in January last year.
At the time Scotland Yard said it might have been part of an untraced wider shipment. Tiny traces were found in a left-luggage locker at the Gare de Lyon in Paris in March.
Last week's arrests appear to confirm fears expressed by the French intelligence service DST in a hitherto secret note dated November 2002, which referred to an "organised attempt by al-Qaida-linked radical Islamists to manufacture or acquire chemical and biological weapons to be used in attacks".
It said the men involved were mainly "veterans of Afghanistan with chemical and biological expertise who have recently returned from fighting Russian forces in Chechnya".
It devoted an entire chapter to the possible role of the extended Benchellali family.
The arrests also reinforce evidence that several active al-Qaida cells are operating in Europe.
The Swiss authorities arrested eight people last week in connection with the suicide bombing of housing compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, last May.
The head of the DST, Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, said late last year that France had successfully foiled "quite a few" terrorist plots: 120 suspected Islamists had been arrested since the September 11 attacks and half of them convicted of membership of a terrorist organisation.
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Alert PETA! That's the only way liberals will oppose terrorism!
Possibly payback for the Battle of Tours 732.
I mean I can understand (not appreciate) why they're so rabidly anti-mixit. But they don't realize it's a much different world now.
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