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1994-05-02
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<text>
<title>
France: Global Terrorism
</title>
<article>
<hdr>
Patterns Of Global Terrorism: 1991
Western European Overview: France
</hdr>
<body>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p>Source: United States Department of State, April 1992.
</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>