Terrorists Threaten French Rails
A previously unknown terror group is threatening to blow up French railway tracks unless it is paid millions of dollars, authorities said Wednesday.
Information from the group led to the recovery on Feb. 21 of an explosive device buried in the bed of a railway line near Limoges in central France, about 200 miles south of Paris, according to the government.
It was defused, reports CBS News Correspondent Elaine Cobbe, but was powerful enough, and sophisticated enough, for police to be worried there may indeed be the ten others the group says its has placed on tracks.
It was made from an explosive mixture of diesel fuel and nitrates and had a relatively sophisticated detonator, said a judicial official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"We know nothing of this group but we are taking the threat seriously," said Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
Experts examined and tested the recovered bomb, and it "proved to be dangerous" because it broke a rail track, he added.
The government had earlier urged French and international media not to report the blackmail effort to protect efforts to establish contacts with the group. But the Interior Ministry released details Wednesday about the threats after the story leaked.
The group "has sent several letters demanding an important sum of money in exchange for neutralizing several bombs it says it has laid, notably under rail lines," the ministry said in a statement.
Police said the group threatened attacks unless it receives $5 million within days. Police do not believe the group has any connection to Islamic terror networks.
President Jacques Chirac's office and the Interior Ministry received at least three letters, on Dec. 10, and Feb. 13 and 17, that threatened nine railway targets, officials said.
Two magistrates, including renowned anti-terror investigator Jean-Louis Bruguiere, are investigating. Bruguiere is France's foremost anti-terror magistrate; his previous success included the imprisonment of infamous terrorist Carlos the Jackal.
The Interior Ministry said the group identifies itself as AZF — the same initials as a chemical factory that exploded, killing 30 people, in southwestern France in 2001. Investigators believe that explosion was accidental.
AZF "presents itself as a 'pressure group with terrorist characteristics,'" the ministry's statement said.
Police are working the case, but "hope to do it with discretion to give themselves the maximum of chances" for success, the ministry said, without elaborating on how the investigation is proceeding.