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More Incidents of Denying Islamist Terrorism

by Daniel Pipes
February 8, 2005

updated Aug 7, 2009

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I published a column by this title today, documenting thirteen cases of presumptive Islamist terrorism, when the first response of the police, prosecutors, and politicians is to look the other way, insisting that there is no link.

But my column lacked space to include all the prior cases, and no doubt future ones will come along, so here is an ongoing factual appendix:

Additionally, some airplane incidents might have been whitewashed. The year 2001 saw the shooting down over Ukraine of a Sibir airliner from Israel to Russia, killing 77, ascribed to the accidental launching of a Ukrainian military missile; and the crash of American Airlines 587 in New York, killing 265, where the NTSB found "no evidence [of] … any criminality" despite the possible presence of an Al-Qaeda operative.

Readers are invited to send other examples of denying Islamist terrorism to me at the address below. (February 8, 2005)

Read this headline: "Paris: Gang suspected of killing Jew nabbed." Then the subheadline: "Ilan Halimi, 23-year-old Parisian man, found tied to tree, naked, wounded, with burns covering his body; police arrest 13 suspects, say act not motivated by anti-Semitism."

OK, so that seems pretty clear, just another dead Jew. But hold on a moment, what is this we see down the page, right down at the bottom? "We think there is anti-Semitism in this affair," Rafi, Ilan's brother-in-law, told the European Jewish Press. "First because the killers tried to kidnap at least two other Jews, and secondly because of what they said on the phone. When we said we didn't have Euro 500,000 to give them, they answered we should go to the synagogue and get it," Rafi stressed. "They also recited verses from the Koran. We didn't know what they were saying but the police told us," he said.

Now the police say that they are "not motivated by anti-Semitism, but added that they have not yet discovered what led the group to commit the acts." So what pray do the comments made by the victims family amount to other than possible evidence of a religious motive?

According to AFP, police are still hunting for the gang's suspected leader, a 26-year-old man named Youssef Fofana, who nicknames himself "Brain of Barbarians" and is described as "extremely dangerous." So far 12 people accused of the crime have been arrested in France and one in Belgium.

Related Topics:  Counter-terrorism, Muslims in the West, Radical Islam, Terrorism receive the latest by email: subscribe to daniel pipes' free mailing list This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.

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