| Home Front: WoT |
| A Week of Diversity and Terror |
| 2017-03-27 |
| On Saturday, Ziyed Ben Belgacem pays a visit to Orly Airport in Paris. He grabs a female soldier from behind and grapples for her rifle while holding a pellet gun to her head. He warns the other soldiers to drop their rifles and raise their hands. He shouts, "I am here to die in the name of Allah ... There will be deaths." ...French Police go on to investigate the motive of the Tunisian Muslim settler. His father insists that he wasn’t a terrorist. The media rushes to blame drugs for his attack. It reports widely on the drugs in his system rather than the Koran found on his body. No one asks if he was on drugs or on Jihad. ...On Wednesday, Khalid Masood, a Muslim convert, rents a car in a town near Birmingham from an Enterprise rent-a-car shop sandwiched between a Staples and a beauty salon offering walk-in eyebrow waxing. Over a fifth of Birmingham is Muslim and by the time the bloodshed was over and Masood was in the hospital, police raided a flat over a restaurant advertising "A Taste of Persia" ...On Thursday, Mohammed, a Tunisian Muslim tries to drive a car through a pedestrian mall on a major shopping street in Antwerp. It was right around the anniversary of the Brussels bombings in which Moroccan Muslim settler terrorists had killed 32 people and wounded 300. ...British authorities claimed that they foiled a dozen terror attacks last year. There are arrests for terror plots in France and Germany. Every week there is either a terror plot or a memorial for the last terror attack before we are told to go on with our million acts of normalcy. ...Somewhere along the way it wasn’t life that became normal, but terror. And the insistence on normalcy just normalizes the terror. A week with three terror attacks across Europe is no longer extraordinary. We have come to expect that there will be men trying to stab and run us over from Paris to Antwerp to London. And we have come to expect another Islamic terror plot targeting Kansas City, Miami, Columbia, New York, San Bernardino, Boston, Tampa, Dallas, Rochester, Springfield and any city. We don’t know when or where the next attack will come. But we know whom it will come from. Unless we're really smart members of cognitive elite. |
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| Two Charged over Arms Supply to French Airport Attacker | ||
| 2017-03-26 | ||
| [AnNahar] French anti-terrorism judges have charged two men suspected of involvement in supplying a weapon to the gunman killed at Gay Paree's Orly airport after attacking soldiers, a judicial source said Saturday. The suspects, aged 30 and 43, were charged Friday for "association with terrorist criminals" over the March 18 attack and are being held in jug, the source said. The younger one was also charged with arms possession related to a terror plot. They are both from the Gay Paree area and lived close to the assailant, Ziyed Ben Belgacem,
Ben Belgacem, born in La Belle France to Tunisian parents, grabbed a soldier on patrol at Orly's southern terminal and put a gun to her head and seized her rifle, saying he wanted to "die for Allah". His father insisted his son -- who had spent time in prison for armed robbery and drug-dealing -- was not a holy warrior. He had, however, been investigated in 2015 over suspicions he had been radicalised while serving jail time, but his name did not feature on the list of those thought to pose a high risk. The attack at Orly came with La Belle France still on high alert following a wave of jihadist attacks that have claimed more than 230 lives in two years. The violence has made security a key issue in La Belle France's two-round presidential election on April 23 and May 7. | ||
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| French Airport Attacker 'Had Drunk and Taken Drugs' | ||||
| 2017-03-21 | ||||
Investigators are still trying to understand what motivated Saturday's assault by 39-year-old Ziyed Ben Belgacem, which led to a major security scare and the temporary closure of the capital's second-busiest airport. "Toxicology tests carried out on Sunday showed an alcohol level of 0.93 grams per liter in his blood, and the presence of cannabis and cocaine," the source said.
The attacker, who had also fired at police in a northern Gay Paree suburb earlier that morning, was rubbed out by two other soldiers after a scuffle. Investigators were examining his telephone.
The violence has made security a key issue in La Belle France's two-round presidential election on April 23 and May 7.
Ben Belgacem's brother and cousin were released Sunday after they, like the attacker's father, were held for questioning. All three had approached police themselves on Saturday after the attack. After spending Friday night in a bar with his cousin, Ben Belgacem was pulled over by police for speeding in the gritty northern Gay Paree suburb of Garges-les-Gonesse, where he lived, just before 7:00 am. He drew a gun and fired, slightly injuring one officer. Ben Belgacem later appeared at the bar where he had been the previous night, firing more shots and stealing another car before continuing on to the airport. Gay Paree prosecutor Francois Molins said Ben Belgacem appeared to have become caught up in a "sort of headlong flight that became more and more destructive." Dozens of flights to and from Orly were canceled during an hours-long shutdown after the incident, but by Sunday afternoon air traffic had returned to normal, a spokeswoman for the Gay Paree airports authority said. At the time of his death, Ben Belgacem was carrying a petrol can in his backpack, as well as 750 euros ($805) in cash, a copy of the Koran, a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. | ||||
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| Europe |
| CCTV footage shows moment Orly Airport attacker grabs soldier’s gun |
| 2017-03-21 |
| Footage has emerged of the moment a man was rubbed out on Saturday by French police after seizing a soldier’s gun at Gay Paree Orly airport in La Belle France. The recording, which was made available on Monday, shows 39-year-old Ziyed Ben Belgacem approaching a French soldier from behind and the consequent struggle over the weapon. The busy Orly airport south of Gay Paree was evacuated and security forces swept the area for bombs to make sure the dead man was not wearing an boom belt, but nothing had been found. Around 3,000 passengers were evacuated from the airport at the time of the attack, the second busiest in the country. |
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| French Investigators Probe Motives of Orly Airport Attacker | ||
| 2017-03-20 | ||
Saturday's assault by 39-year-old Ziyed Ben Belgacem caused a major security scare, leading to the temporary closure of the capital's second-busiest airport and the cancellation of dozens of flights. By Sunday morning the situation had nearly returned to normal. Ben Belgacem, who was born in La Belle France to Tunisian parents, said he wanted to "die for Allah" and that others too would die after grabbing a female soldier, putting a gun to her head and seizing her rifle. The attack comes with La Belle France still on high alert following a series of jihadist attacks that have claimed more than 230 lives in two years. Security is one of the key issues in La Belle France's two-round presidential election on April 23 and May 7. Ben Belgacem's father insisted the assailant -- who had spent time in prison for drugs and armed robbery and been investigated for links to radical Islam -- was "not a terrorist" and was acting under the influence of drink and drugs. The father was released from custody late Saturday after being questioned. Investigators were continuing to quiz Ben Belgacem's brother and cousin for clues as to whether the gunman had planned a terror attack or whether the airport attack was the unhinged epilogue to a shooting spree. - 'Drink and cannabis to blame' - "My son was not a terrorist. He never prayed and he drank," his father, whose first name was not given, told Europe 1 radio, blaming "drink and cannabis" for his son's actions. An autopsy was to to be carried out on Ben Belgacem's body Sunday to determine if alcohol or drugs were a factor. Gay Paree prosecutor Francois Molins said he appeared to have become caught up in a "sort of headlong flight that became more and more destructive." The shooting took place on the second day of a visit to Gay Paree by Britannia's Prince William and his wife Kate, which was unaffected. Ben Belgacem's standoff with the security forces began at around 6.30 am (0530 GMT) in the gritty northern Gay Paree suburb of Garges-les-Gonesse, where he lived. After spending the night in a bar, he was pulled over by police for speeding. Ben Belgacem drew a gun and fired at the police, slightly injuring one officer. - 'I've screwed up' - His father told Europe 1 his son phoned him shortly after the confrontation "in a state of extreme agitation". "He said to me: 'Daddy, please forgive me. I've screwed up with a police officer'." Ben Belgacem then drove to Orly airport, stopping off first in a bar where he had been drinking hours earlier and firing more shots and then stealing another car. On the departures floor of the airport, he grabbed a soldier patrolling with two colleagues under the Sentinelle anti-terror operation that has mobilized thousands of troops since January 2015. Gay Paree prosecutor Francois Molins said Ben Belgacem threatened the three, ordering them to surrender. "I'm here to die for Allah. In any case, people are going to die," Molins quoted him as saying. He tried to use the soldier as a human shield but her colleagues managed to shoot him as they scuffled. Ben Belgacem was carrying a petrol can in a backpack as well as a copy of the Koran, Molins said. He was investigated in 2015 over his suspected links to Islamist A small amount of cocaine and a machete were found during a search of his home on Saturday. A front man for the Gay Paree airport authority said Sunday that the backlog of travelers stranded by the chaos had been cleared and that passengers were experiencing only "slight delays." Soldiers guarding key sites have been targeted in four attacks in the past two years that have caused only minor injuries. In mid-February, a machete-wielding Egyptian man attacked a soldier outside Gay Paree's Louvre museum, injuring him slightly, before being shot and maimed. French President Francois Hollande ...the Socialist president of La Belle France, an economic bad joke for la Belle France but seemingly a foreign policy realist... said Saturday his government was "determined to fight relentlessly against terrorism, defend the security of our compatriots and ensure the protection of our country."
His house was among scores searched in November 2015 in the immediate aftermath of suicide bomb-and-gun attacks that killed 130 people in Gay Paree. Those searches targeted people with suspected radical leanings. | ||
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