France Rounds Up AQ Suspects
France has conducted a series of raids overnight that have netted eleven suspected al-Qaeda terrorists. The investigators followed the men over the last few months as an off-shoot of a wider counterterrorism mission:
French counterterrorism police arrested 11 suspects as part of efforts aimed at dismantling an alleged al-Qaida-linked recruiting network to send radical Islamic fighters to Iraq, police officials said Wednesday.Nine suspects were detained in and near the southern city of Toulouse before dawn Wednesday, following the arrest of two others at Orly airport in Paris who had just been sent home by Syrian authorities, police said.
Two of the suspects, mostly aged in their 20s, had sought to enter Iraq through neighboring Syria, but were detained by police there and remanded into French custody, police said. An investigation was continuing.
This ring did not just work to send jihadis to Iraq. They also found evidence that the suspects had plotted to bomb French supermarkets. Given the large Muslim population in France, such a terrorist spree could have had an inflammatory effect on the banlieues and their relation to the general population.
Syria's expulsion of two of these men also seems noteworthy. Iraq has closed the border with Syria, which would have made it impossible for them to cross the frontier through normal border checkpoints. Normally, one would think terrorists with dodgy paperwork would have avoided the normal channels, but they apparently did not feel enough concern to take alternates routes into Iraq. One has to wonder how easily terrorists traverse this border under normal circumstances.
It also demonstrates another truth: al-Qaeda in Iraq is very definitely part of the same al-Qaeda network that we consider our enemy from 9/11. It is not just a handy designation for native Sunni insurgencies. We are fighting against the same terrorists in our war on terror that we would have to fight elsewhere if we pulled away from the front lines in Iraq.
We don't hesitate to criticize France for their failures, but this shows that they've remained on the ball against radical Islamist terrorists. Hopefully this success will also produce some actionable intelligence to allow the West to uncover more recruiters for the Iraqi jihad.
Posted by Ed Morrissey on February 14, 2007 5:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)
