France threatened by Islamist terror group

FRANCE last night said it has received threats of a possible attack against French interests from an Islamist group apparently named after a Chechen guerrilla killed in a Moscow hostage-taking in 2002.

The Justice Ministry said Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin received a warning which spoke of possible attacks within France and against French interests abroad.

The letter was signed by a group calling itself the Mosvar Barayev Commando, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

That appeared to be a reference to Mosvar Barayev, who organised the October 2002 Chechen commando raid and hostage-taking at a Moscow theatre that ended with 129 dead. He died in the special forces raid on the theatre.

Nicolas Sarkozy, Interior Minister, said that experts were “in the process of analysing” the threats.

“These are threats articulated in such a way that they are being taken very seriously,” a judicial source said.

“It is obviously not yet possible to comment on the value of this document,” the statement concluded.

Sources close to the investigation said the group was until now unknown to French intelligence services, who were researching the organisation.

The two-page letter addressed to Mr Raffarin and containing the threats was delivered to the offices of Le Parisien early yesterday, the sources said.

The letter linked the threat to the French ban on headscarves in state schools, deputy editor of Le Parisien Jacques Esperandieu said.

The justice ministry said that Paris prosecutors immediately opened the inquiry upon receiving the message transmitted by the newspaper, turning over the investigation to anti-terrorism police.

Mr Raffarin has called a meeting of parliamentary leaders for tomorrow to discuss “terrorist risks” in France and the government’s security plans.

Earlier yesterday, French President Jacques Chirac said after talks with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder: “France is not currently a specific target, but like all democracies, it is not immune from terrorist acts.”

But security experts say France is a target because of its co-operation with authorities fighting Islamic militants in its former north African colonies Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.

Several members of hard-line Algerian Islamic groups are currently being held in French jails.

In the past weeks, French authorities have received terror threats from another little-known group that calls itself AZF.

The group claims to have planted nine bombs along France’s railways and has threatened to detonate them unless paid millions of euro.

Information from AZF led to the recovery of an explosive device buried in the bed of a railway line near Limoges in central France last month.

In the Spanish capital yesterday police identified and are hunting five new Moroccan suspects who they believe took part in the bombings, the newspaper El País reported.