Posted on 09/14/2006 4:40:20 AM PDT by rightgrafix
Al-Qaeda's deputy leader has claimed that a radical Algerian Islamist group had joined al-Qaeda and is being urged to punish France, it has emerged.
Ayman al-Zawahiri appeared a video on a website on the fifth anniversary of the 11 September attacks.
In the tape, he issued a warning of new attacks targeting Israel and the Gulf.
Although France's government opposed the US-led war in Iraq, French officials believe the country is still a target for Islamist militants.
In the video, Zawahiri says: "Osama Bin Laden has told me to announce to Muslims that the GSPC [the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat] has joined al-Qaeda," according to quotes given by the AFP news agency.
"This should be a source of chagrin, frustration and sadness for the apostates [of the regime in Algeria], the treacherous sons of [former colonial power] France."
He urges the group to become "a bone in the throat of the American and French crusaders".
"We pray to God that our brothers from the GSPC succeed in causing harm to the top members of the crusader coalition, and particularly their leader, the vicious America," he says.
Anne Giudicelli, head of the Terrorisc security consultancy who reviewed the whole tape, told Le Figaro newspaper the anti-France message had dominated the homepage of the website used by the GSPC for the past few days.
'High threat'
On Thursday, France's interior ministry said Zawahiri's comments "confirmed the high level of threat against our country", officials told AFP.
Ministry officials add that al-Qaeda had announced in a statement on 11 September 2003 that the GSPC was one of its components and there have since been other threats issued against France.
On Monday, Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, head of the DST domestic security service, said the threat of terrorist attack in France remained "very high and very international".
"For our Islamist adversaries, our country is frankly in the Western camp, the crusaders in their words, and we will be spared nothing," he told French radio.
The GSPC was created in the late 1990s by members of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which the aim of establishing an Islamic state in Algeria.
The GIA and other militant groups waged a decade-long campaign of violence, following the annulment in 1992 of elections which Islamic groups were poised to win.
An estimated 150,00 people are thought to have been killed in the violence.
I wanted to be the first to make a surrender joke but I just coudn't find an angle for it.
Let's just hope France doesn't surrender it's nukes!
>and is being urged to punish France, it has emerged.
For what? Being it's number 3 ally in the whole world?
How? Disrupt cheese production?
I'd like to make the requisite French joke, as well, but this isn't funny news.
To recap:
Go figure.
I spent some time there recently. The French are proud and deeply patriotic. If focused, their military and intelligence services are effective and ruthless. AQ would likely regret attacking them.
No it isn't funny. I don't know whether to think this is a sign of weakness, to confine terror to the Gulf region and Europe or a sign of an expansion of the war against Europe.
Somehow I think the French may rise to the occasion,,I hope so.
The sooner the French realize that we're all in this together, the more effective the struggle against islamofascism will be.
"And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane. "
Appease terrorists.
Embrace Islamics.
Oppose the United States at every turn.
Actively oppose Israel in the United Nations
...........and STILL get targeted by Islamics.
Go figure.
It's kind of like seeing a puppy at the pound who is frothing at the mouth, shunning water, and growling..and then bringing it home as a pet.
It doesn't care if you feed it, house it, or pet it.
It's going to kill you anyway.
Plagiarist. ;^)
Uh oh. I didn't read the thread. Honest!
Ripling.... is he related to Ruyard Kipling? ;^)
Some people think that this acronym means Great Minds Think Alike, but we know that it really means Greenwich Mean Time: Apples!
Somewhere recently I either heard or read a U.S. serviceman discussing the French military assigned with our troops in Afghanistan. IIRC, he related how brave they were, and that some of them had to use names other than their own because their familes would be targeted in France by Islamists if their real identities were used.
I wouldn't bet on it.
I agree. My distaste for France and its politics does not mean I want them to suffer a major attack. Though it would be a wakeup call for France, likely it would also cause them to blame the US for inciting the attack because of our foreign policy/ actions (war on Iraq) and then ask us for a handout...
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