A bloody reign of terror was unleashed in Paris in September, taking 10 lives and maiming at least 200 others.
The attacks apparently are linked to a demand for the release of three terrorists incarcerated by the French: a 35-year-old Lebanese Marxist by the name of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, an Armenian convicted of the 1983 Orly airport bombing that killed eight persons, and the would-be assassin of former Iranian Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar.
Abdallah is a leading member of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction and has been linked with a number of terrorist crimes, including the 1982 murder of deputy U.S. military attaché, Lt. Colonel Charles Ray, and the subsequent killing of Israeli embassy counselor, Yacov Barsimentov. Italian authorities have also connected Abdallah to the 1984 assassination of General Leamon R. Hunt, the U.S. head of the multinational Sinai peacekeeping force, for which they have demanded his extradition.
Two of Abdallah's brothers, Robert and Emile, have been identified by witnesses in Paris as responsible for placing several lethal bombs, and French intelligence officials believe that most of Abdallah's confederates are members of his extended family from the Lebanese villages of Kobayat and Andakt.
Shortly after Robert and Emile were named by French authorities as their primary suspects, they held a surprise press conference in Lebanon, denying that they had been involved or had even been in France. French authorities have evidence that, in the immediate aftermath of the last bombing by members of the Armenian terrorist group ASALA (Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia), one or both of the brothers were spirited out of the country and rapidly transported to Lebanon so that they could establish phony alibis. ASALA is also suspected of providing other logistical support to members of Abdallah's gang such as weapons, explosives, safe houses, and false identification papers.
Restoring Past Mistakes
The new government of Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, which, in part at least, came to power last March on a tough law-and-order platform, has found itself under mounting public pressure to do something about the escalating violence and bring the perpetrators to justice. Although Chirac bears little direct responsibility for his nation's present plight, he is nevertheless on the proverbial "hot seat," and his party's political fortunes are likely to turn in large measure on how effectively his government handles the current situation, though handicapped by the ambivalent policies and political vacillation of previous French administrations toward terrorism.
Over the years, the French have welcomed political refugees of every stripe and hue on the condition that they leave their struggles behind them. Such understandings, however, have borne bitter fruit in recent years. France has been turned into a battlefield as foreign terrorist groups and political dissidents pursue their conflicts on French soil, often warring against one another and occasionally even biting the hand that fed them.
The French laissez-faire attitude toward terrorists within its borders was greatly aggravated by the
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