While international terrorist incidents were relatively few in France, in 1991 French authorities played a significant role in calling to account state sponsors of terrorism.
At the beginning of the Persian Gulf war in January 1991, France expelled 14 Iraqi diplomats and Embassy employees and 18 others suspected of planning terrorism or sabotage. This followed an earlier expulsion in September 1990 when France expelled 11 officials from the Iraqi Embassy in Paris after Iraqi soldiers sacked the French defense attache's house in Kuwait. The government also implemented an ambitious antiterrorist plan during the Gulf crisis which provided augmented security for potential targets. There were only a few relatively minor bombings in France related to the war.
In August former Iranian Prime Minister Shapur Bakhtiar and his personal secretary were brutally murdered in Paris in an apparent act of state-sponsored terrorism. Four Iranians were arrested in France and Switzerland in connection with the assassination. In October, a French investigating magistrate issued an international arrest warrant for Hussein Sheikhattar, a high-ranking Iranian official for his alleged role in the crime. The French investigation led also to the arrests in Turkey of several Iranians and Turks thought to be connected to the case. Both President Mitterrand and Foreign Minister Dumas postponed planned trips to Iran because of publicity linking the Iranian Government to the murders.
The same French investigating magistrate also brought formal charges in October 1991 against four Libyan officials, including Colonel Qadhafi's brother-in-law, for the terrorist bombing in September 1989 of a French UTA airliner over Niger that killed 171 passengers and crew. He also issued material witness warrants for two other high-ranking Libyan officials.
The French government joined the United States and Britain, which had issued indictments against two Libyan officials for the bombing in 1988 of Pan Am Flight 103, in formally pressing Libya to renounce terrorism and cooperate with the investigations. The case against Libya for these two terrorist attacks effectively stalled an upturn in Franco-Libyan relations.
Basque terrorism continued to create problems in France. Within France itself, Basque terrorism in 1991 resulted in a score of property bombings aimed at developers (real estate offices and Spanish bank branches) and public buildings, all claimed by the French Basque organization Iparretarrak (IK). More than a dozen IK members, including its presumed leader, were sentenced to prison terms in 1991 for criminal associations. Some of them still face charges for murder and attempted murder of police officers.
Cooperation with Spain resulted in important setbacks for ETA Basque separatists operating out of France. During 1991 there were several Franco-Spanish ministerial meetings and summits where bilateral coordination against Basque terrorists was discussed. Many, if not most, ETA terrorists are thought to be French nationals or hiding in France. French authorities arrested nearly 40 of them in 1991--about half of them in December--including several recognized ETA cadres.
One Spanish ETA member was given a 17-year sentence in June after his trial in France. A Portuguese member of the Antiterrorist Liberation Group (GAL), a clandestine rightwing Spanish organization that hunted down suspected Basque terrorists in France during the 1980s, was sentenced to 15 years in France.
Various factions of the separatist Corsican National Liberation Front accounted for the plurality of terrorist attacks in France in 1991, mainly bombings of governmental and economic targets in Corsica and the French mainland. Corsican terrorism continued despite increased autonomy accorded the island in late 1990; in May 1991 the French Constitutional Council reversed a provision of the autonomy legislation that recognized a distinct Corsican people. At least some of the violence on Corsica may actually be another manifestation of organized crime.
Four IRA gunrunners were tried in 1991. Their vessel, the Eksund, and its cargo of Libyan guns and explosives had been seized by the French in 1987. The four were sentenced by the French court to prison terms of five to seven years. The ship's captain, who had fled to Ireland in 1990, was sentenced in absentia in March 1991 to seven years.
Source: United States Department of State, April 1992.