Bomb Scare At Paris Department Store

[FSTargetDrone]

No explosions, nobody hurt:

Explosives Found in Paris Department Store

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 16, 2008; 11:15 AM

PARIS, Dec. 16 -- Police found five sticks of dynamite in a landmark Paris department store Tuesday, after an unknown group warned that bombs were hidden there and threatened more attacks unless France withdraws its military forces from Afghanistan.

The interior minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, said the dynamite was old and there was no detonator to set it off, suggesting the threat to Christmas-season shoppers had been minimal. But the scare nevertheless dramatized the risks inherent in President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision last April to increase the number of French troops in Afghanistan to about 3,000 and expand their role to include combat operations.

"In the present situation, I call on everybody to be very careful and very moderate," Sarkozy told reporters in Strasbourg, where he was addressing the European Parliament. "Vigilance in the face of terrorism is the only possible line, because unfortunately anything can happen, and firmness, because we do not compromise with terrorists, we combat them."

Belgian police cited the presence of French and other European troops alongside those of the United States in Afghanistan as a possible motive for six North African immigrants arrested Thursday in Brussels and charged with belonging to a terrorist organization. Belgian authorities said three of the six had been to Afghanistan and one returned recently with the intention to carry out a suicide attack in concert with the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

A French man of Tunisian origin, taken into custody in the French Alpine town of Grenoble as part of the same investigation, was charged Monday with illegal association "related to a terrorist enterprise," French authorities announced. He was suspected of helping run a now-closed Internet site, Minbar, which Belgian authorities described as a propaganda vehicle for Islamic extremism.

Malika al-Aroud, one of the six arrested in Brussels, was a frequent contributor to the site; her husband was also among those arrested. Aroud's previous husband, a Belgian of Tunisian origin named Abdessater Dahmane, killed himself in a 2001 suicide bombing in northern Afghanistan that targeted and killed the main anti-Taliban military chieftain at the time, Ahmed Shah Massoud. The suicide bombing was two days before the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and at the Pentagon.

The French news agency Agence France-Presse said it received a letter at its Paris headquarters Tuesday morning warning that several "bombs" had been placed in the men's section of Printemps, one of two giant department stores near the Gare St. Lazare train station in central Paris. The letter, posted in Paris on Monday, seemed designed to help police find the explosives, specifying a bomb was in the third-floor toilets "in the first toilet as you enter." But it warned that next time there would be no such notice.

"Get this message to your president of the republic so he withdraws these troops from [Afghanistan] before the end of February 2009," added the letter, signed by the Afghan Revolutionary Front. "Otherwise we will be in action again in your capitalist department stores, and this time without warning you."

The letter, written in French with a number of grammatical errors, went on to say two more "bombs" had been place in the women's toilets on the second floor. Alliot-Marie said police found five sticks of dynamite in all, without specifying where they were discovered.

Soon after getting word of the letter, police cordoned off the area and evacuated the store, which normally would be crowded with shoppers and tourists buying Christmas presents and enjoying elaborately decorated show windows that are an annual attraction. Several hours later police took down their barriers and the store reopened for business under increased security.

The Paris newspaper Le Monde recalled that a caller to the news agency had made similar threats Dec. 10, leading police to evacuate the store for several hours. In addition, it said, a Taliban military commander warned in a video distributed last month that France faced retribution if it did not pull the troops out of Afghanistan.

[Sea Skimmer]

Old dynamite becomes progressively more shock sensitive as the nitroglycerin separates out of the mixture and forms crystals. This can reach the point that you can’t physically move the dynamite and have to blow it in place. So… the dynamite being old is not a good sign; but I guess the police are counting on public ignorance to try to use this to reduce fear.

[FSTargetDrone]

Old dynamite becomes progressively more shock sensitive as the nitroglycerin separates out of the mixture and forms crystals. This can reach the point that you can’t physically move the dynamite and have to blow it in place.

Which then makes me wonder, did the people who placed these explosives know this? They may have been handed a package by the higher-ups, not knowing the danger. They may have thoughy that because the detonators were non-functional, things were somewhat safe.

Because this was apparently a warning and not intended as an actual attack, whoever sent the people carrying the explosives might have specifically chosen to send soemone ignorant of the danger, not wanting to risk someone with more expertise in case things went wrong.

[hongi]

The terrorists are smoking crack if they believe the French government will bend. It didn't happen with Britian and Australia, I highly doubt it will happen with France.

[Sea Skimmer]

Which then makes me wonder, did the people who placed these explosives know this? They may have been handed a package by the higher-ups, not knowing the danger. They may have thoughy that because the detonators were non-functional, things were somewhat safe.

Because this was apparently a warning and not intended as an actual attack, whoever sent the people carrying the explosives might have specifically chosen to send soemone ignorant of the danger, not wanting to risk someone with more expertise in case things went wrong.

They didn’t have a detonator at all. Without knowing the true details we couldn’t say if the stuff was dangerously sensitive or not. I’d expect this was the act of one person who simply came across an old stash of dynamite or otherwise got access to it. They might not have access to any detonators at all, though it isn’t the most demanding task to make your own, especially if you can get access to small arms ammunition and take out the primers. You could also just make a firebomb with the dynamite inside and cook it off.

France is after all still littered with the remnants of two worlds wars, including a use number of explosive devices people might come across. Metal detectors are illegal in most of the north of the country, specifically to prevent people from searching for unexploded bombs and shells (and also to protected the many unknown graves of soldiers) with them. You might find anything from some dynamite to a 20 inch howitzer shell. A few people, mostly farmers plowing, are still killed or maimed by UXOs in France and Belgium ever year.

[FSTargetDrone]

They didn’t have a detonator at all.

My mistake, when I replied above, I was thinking of a news report I'd heard earlier today on TV and I was sure it had said there were non-functional detonators.