10 years ago yesterday, a bomb exploded in a crowded RER (metro) in the
Saint Michel station in the heart of Paris.
8 people were killed, over 150 were injured. It was the first of a
series which would last for another 3 months and see another 6
terrorist attacks in Paris:
- 17 August: a bomb in a litter bin on the Place de l'Etoile injures 17
people
- 26 August: a similar bomb, defective, is found on a TGV (high speed
train) between Paris and Lyons; the finger prints of two people, Khamel
Kelkal and Boualem Bensaid, are found;
- 3 September: a bomb explodes in a market on Boulevard Lenoir, again
in Paris, injuring 4;
- 4 September: a bomb is found in a public lavatory place Charles
Vallin, still in Paris, and defused in time;
- 7 September: a bomb explodes in front of a Jewish school in
Villeurbane (near Lyons);
- 29 September: Khlaed Kelkal is found, chased, and killed by the
police;
more below
- 6 October (the day of the funeral of Kelkal), a bomb explodes near
the Maison-Blanche metro station in Paris. Bensaid's fingerprints are
found on debris, again.
- 17 October: a bomb explodes on another RER line at the same Saint
Michel metro station, injuring 19 people
- 1 November - Boualem Bensaid is arrested, as is Smain Ait Ali
Belkacem, an accomplice, the next day in Lille as he was about to drop
another bomb in a market place.
All the perpetrators are now dead (Kelkal) or sentenced to long jail
terms which they are currently serving in France (Bensaid and
Belkacem). That is, all - except the mastermind and financier of that
network, Rachid Ramda, whose extradition to France has been refused by
- guess who - the shoot-first-ask-questions-later United Kingdom, under
the pretext that his defense rights would not be properly upheld under
the harsh French laws against terrorism.
So who's right? The UK government and judiciary of the past 10 years,
which obviously did not feel that a series of terrorist attacks
on the metro and elsewhere justified anything but the strictest respect
for civil rights of the accused, or today's government which gives
secret "shoot-to-kill" instructions to its police and is keen to build
up its arsenal of surveillance tools (CCTVs, phone logs, bank payment
data) on the population?
Who's lost all perspective now? Who will protect our civil rights if we
don't do it ourselves? Why were civil rights an important principle
when only French people were killed? Why are you giving up your
principles now? Is it really worth it? What's the difference between
now and then?
(And again, 9/11 may have been larger because they somehow managed to
destroy some big buildings, but it is really any different in essence
than a bomb in the metro? When you will have had a series of 10 bombs
in your city every few days, we'll talk about impact on everybody in a
city and about fear. And yet France pushed a law enforcement response,
developed intelligence gathering capacity, and did not bomb Algeria,
and it's hard to say that the outcome has been worse so far)
The terrorists must not have expected that it would be so easy to
win.
And meanwhile, Iraqis suffer daily terror attacks and we don't really
care.