2001 U.S. Embassy Paris attack plot

The Paris embassy attack plot was a suspected Al-Qaida plot in 2001 to destroy the Embassy of the United States, Paris, France, as well as a munitions depot in Belgium. The NATO headquarters in Brussels was also possibly targeted.

The attack on the U.S. embassy would have involved a suicide bomber. Nizar Trabelsi, a former professional football player, was the designated bomber.

The plot was uncovered and stopped around the time of the September 11 attacks that destroyed the U.S. World Trade Center.

The plot

The operation was based at an apartment in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The Rotterdam cell probably provided the false passports that were used in the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud.

Tunisian Nizar Trabelsi, a former professional football player in Germany, planned the attack and was the designated suicide bomber. An IT student named Kamel Daoudi led the cell and was the alleged bomb maker.

The plan called for a bomb to be built out of sulfur and acetone. Trabelsi planned to strap this bomb onto himself, and cover it up with a business suit. He would then detonate himself in the U.S. embassy.

Then, a van packed with explosives would be driven into the U.S. cultural center of Paris and the explosives inside would be detonated at nearby Place de la Madeleine.

The confession that ended it

The plot began to unravel when a 36-year-old French Algerian conspirator named Djamel Beghal was arrested in late July 2001 for passport fraud at Dubai International Airport in the United Arab Emirates. He was trying to travel back to Europe on a false French passport after receiving training in Afghanistan. Trabelsi went to Brussels and disappeared.[1]

Beghal confessed details of the plot after interrogation. Beghal said that he was relaying instructions from the top brass of Al-Qaida. He recanted parts of his confession after he went back to France, saying that it had been given under duress. By August, the Dutch police wiretapped the Rotterdam cell.

The French government opened an inquiry into the plot on 10 September 2001, one day before the September 11, 2001 attacks occurred. Surveillance had started that day on a group of suspected terrorists in Corbeil-Essonnes, France, near Paris.[2]

Under arrest

On 13 September, four men were arrested in Rotterdam. On the same day, Trabelsi and a Belgian Moroccan were arrested in two different areas of the Brussels metropolitan area. At Trabelsi's Uccle apartment, police found machine pistols, chemical formulas for bomb-making, detailed maps of the U.S. embassy in Paris, and a business suit. They also found fifty liters of acetone and 65 kilograms of sulfur.

When French surveillance officers heard several men contemplating on destroying the evidence on computers, police moved in and arrested them on 21 September.

Algerian Mohammed Berkous was also arrested for the plot.

Belgian police raided an Egyptian snack bar in the heart of Brussels, where they found 100 kg (220 lb) of sulfur and 50 liters (13 gallons) of acetone.

Kamel Daoudi was deported from the United Kingdom by the UK Border Agency on 29 September 2002.

Jamal Beghal (alt.: Djamel Beghal, Djamal Beghal) confessed to being a member of Takfir wal-Hijra, which was affiliated with Al-Qaida.[3] Begal has a French wife and three children, the family lived until 1997 in a ground-floor apartment in Corbeil-Essonnes, "a middle- and working-class suburb south of Paris that was the suspected hub of the network."[3] He then lived in London, and frequented the Finsbury Park Mosque.[3][4]

Beghal said that Bin Laden ordered the attack and that a man named Zein-al-Abideen Mohammed Hussein recruited him. The man turned out to be Abu Zubaydah.

Epilogue

Investigators say that the discovery of the Paris plot uncovered a large network of Islamist terrorists in seven European countries and the United Arab Emirates. The terrorists were affiliated with the Salafist Group for Call and Combat and its partner organization, Takfir wal Hijra, meaning "excommunication and exile". Several Spanish men were arrested for making false credit cards.

Nizar Trabelsi was convicted of trying to destroy public property, illegal arms possession and being a member in a private militia [5][6][7]

On 28 December 2002, four suspected conspirators, Frenchman Jerome Courtailler, Saaid Ibrahim, a Dutchman from Ethiopia, and Algerian Abdelghani Rabia and Algerian-Canadian Adel Tobbichi were found not guilty of terrorism by a federal Dutch court.[8] Courtailler and Abdelghani Rabia were rearrested and jailed by an appellate court.[9][10]

References

  1. ↑ "Thwarting terror cells in Europe". CNN. October 26, 2001. Archived from the original on 2012-08-20. Retrieved 5 July 2012.
  2. ↑ "Thwarting terror cells in Europe". CNN. October 26, 2001. Archived from the original on 2012-08-20. Retrieved 5 July 2012.
  3. 1 2 3 Rotella, Sebastian (22 October 2001). "Embassy plot offers insight into terrorist recruitment, training". Chicago Tribune.
  4. ↑ Rayner, Gordon (8 January 2015). "Charlie Hebdo suspect 'mentored' by Abu Hamza disciple, Djamal Beghal". Telegraph. Retrieved 13 December 2017.
  5. ↑ "Chronology: The Plots." PBS.
  6. ↑ "Terror Verdict For Soccer Pro." CBS News.
  7. ↑ "Al-Qaeda plotters sentenced." BBC.
  8. ↑ "Dutch court frees terror suspects." CNN.
  9. ↑ Europe Fears Islamic Converts May Give Cover for Extremism, New York Times, 19 July 2004
  10. ↑ Gedye, Robin (22 June 2004). "Dutch appeal court jails embassy bomb plotters". The Telegraph. Retrieved 13 December 2017.

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