Paris Department Store Finds Dynamite In Restroom
PARIS — Alerted by a cryptic warning of attacks unless France pulls its troops from Afghanistan, police found an old pack of dynamite sticks Tuesday in the restroom of a top Parisian department store.
The explosives at the Printemps store lacked detonators and the warning message didn't fit the profile of Islamist groups like al-Qaida. Still, the discovery renewed concern over risks of terrorism, especially during the vulnerable holiday season.
Shoppers and employees were noticeably rattled and the scene was chaotic as police evacuated people from the department store in late morning. French television showed women clutching one another or crying as they left the store under a line of police tape.
"Of course, I was scared ... I was just relieved to get out," said Printemps employee Jimmy Manso, as he waited to go back inside.
Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie announced plans to tighten security in Paris and other large cities and called a meeting Wednesday with police chiefs, intelligence and transport officials and department store representatives.
Some 1,500 police reinforcements had already been brought in ahead of the holiday season, mostly to patrol around department stores.
"France will not cede to the terrorist threat," Prime Minister Francois Fillon said.
President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has increased troop levels in Afghanistan and made a surprise visit there a year ago, called for vigilance but said "we cannot compromise with terrorists." France has 2,800 troops in Afghanistan.
Alerted by a letter sent to the French news agency Agence France-Presse, police cordoned off crowded sidewalks in front of Printemps on the Boulevard Haussman. Explosives experts with a sniffer dog then combed the famous store where crowds gather to admire the elaborate Christmas windows.
They found five sticks of dynamite hidden in the third-floor restroom of the menswear department, but failed to find explosives elsewhere. The letter gave detailed directions to the explosives and said they were located in several places but no other cache was found.
Alliot-Marie described the explosives as "relatively old" and lacking detonators.
"There was no risk of explosion," she said.
The letter was signed "Afghan Revolutionary Front," a name not previously known to French police and intelligence officials, Alliot-Marie said. It was postmarked from a working class district of eastern Paris the day before, AFP said.
The letter demanded the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan before the end of February.
"Otherwise we will go back into action in your big capitalist stores and this time without warning you," the letter said in imperfect French, according to AFP.
Experts were perplexed by the content of the letter and even by the name of the group because they were unlike Islamist-style communications that usually begin by citing the Muslim holy book.
One senior police official said several aspects of the incident did not reflect Islamist terrorism _ sending a warning, the type of explosives used, the language in the letter and the name of the group. The official asked that her name not be used because she was not authorized to speak to the media.
"We have a claim from an unknown group which diverges from anything we have seen in the past," said Jean-Charles Brisard, a private investigator working with some Sept. 11 victims and co-author of "Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth."
For the first time, the message is "concrete" rather than on the Internet or in a video _ a real, not virtual, threat, he told Associated Press Television News.
To Louis Caprioli, former counterterrorism chief at the French anti-terror agency, the text was closer to "revolutionary Marxist terminology" than to that of Islamists.
Printemps, meanwhile, reopened its doors in the afternoon.
"It's worrying, but there's no reason to panic," said Evelyne Bredy, a sportswear saleswoman who works on the third floor where the explosives were found. "There are often suspicious packages _ though maybe not this type of evacuation."
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Associated Press Writers Jamey Keaten, Verena von Derschau; Pierre-Antoine Souchard and John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.
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ELAINE GANLEY | December 16, 2008 04:28 PM EST |
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