Police evacuated a major department store in central Paris Tuesday after finding five sticks of dynamite inside, French police told CNN.
CNN affiliate BFM-TV reported the dynamite was not rigged to explode, but police did not immediately confirm the report.
French news agency AFP said it received a letter in the mail Tuesday morning, claiming to be from an Afghan revolutionary group and saying that a bomb was at the renowned Printemps department store. The news agency alerted the police, who evacuated the store, AFP told CNN.
The bomb squad found the suspicious package around 11 a.m. (5 a.m. ET) and were still investigating nearly two hours later, police said.
Jimmy Carter
For The Washington Post
The advancement of human rights around the world was a cornerstone of foreign policy and U.S. leadership for decades, until the attacks on our country on Sept. 11, 2001.
Since then, while Americans continue to espouse freedom and democracy, our government’s abusive practices have undermined struggles for freedom in many parts of the world. As the gross abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay were revealed, the United States lost its mantle as a champion of human rights, eliminating our national ability to speak credibly on the subject, let alone restrain or gain concessions from oppressors. Tragically, a global backlash against democracy and rights activists, who are now the targets of abuse, has followed.
The advancement of human rights and democracy is necessary for global stability and can be achieved only through the local, often heroic, efforts of individuals who speak out against injustice and oppression — endeavors the United States should lead, not impede. If the early warnings of human rights activists had been heeded and tough diplomacy and timely intervention mobilized, the horrific, and in some cases ongoing, violence in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan’s Darfur region and the Democratic Republic of the Congo might have been averted.
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. With a new administration and a new vision coming to the White House, we have the opportunity to move boldly to restore the moral authority behind the worldwide human rights movement. But the first steps must be taken at home.
Sebastian Rotella
Los Angeles Times
The Pakistani extremist group suspected in the Mumbai rampage remains a distant shadow for most Americans. But the threat is much nearer than it seems.
For years, Lashkar-e-Taiba has actively recruited Westerners, especially Britons and Americans, serving as a kind of farm team for Islamic militants who have gone on to execute attacks for Al Qaeda, a close ally. The Pakistani network makes its training camps accessible to English speakers, providing crucial skills to an increasingly young and Western-born generation of extremists.
Briton Aabid Khan was one of them. When British police arrested him at Manchester International Airport on his return from Pakistan in June 2006, they found a trove of terrorist propaganda and manuals on his laptop that the trial judge later described as “amongst the largest and most extensive ever discovered.” The haul included maps and videos of potential targets in New York City and Washington.
One video, shot deep in Pakistani extremist turf, shows the then-21-year-old Khan with a grinning young man who says he’s from Los Angeles — a mysterious figure in a case that apparently illustrates Lashkar’s dangerous reach.
Alexandra Sage Mehta
American living in Mumbai
Had a night of terrified boredom—what a weird combination. Is that what ongoing fear becomes. Boring? Went to dinner at Indigo Delhi, behind the Taj hotel with two friends. It’s an “ex-pat” spot, little sibling of Bombay’s fanciest restaurant, Indigo, serving continental kids’ food: pizza, waffles, burgers, and tollhouse-tasting cookies you can order in advance. Right before dessert we heard the first shootings down the road. An American friend called to tell me to sit tight–I casually said we had ice cream and could bide our time, a heinous thing to say. Then the area was closed off, and we were essentially in hiding. The iron curtains came down over the big glass windows, the lights were turned off and a policeman was stationed outside the door. We moved to the back of the restaurant and hunkered down to sleeplessness and second-hand news–there was no TV or radio in the restaurant.
We were a mixed group — a German couple, two French, an Indian family whose papers were in their suite at the Taj. Our bills had been brought and alcohol cut off — but the waiters continued to serve throughout the night — water, tea, coffee and then in the early morning, cakes. I had toast and an apple pie — starved from nerves. Two Indian women used table clothes as blankets, some waiters slept on chairs or benches. Through the uncovered tops of of the windows, we could see ambulances and fire engines passing and, finally, we saw day break. It was somehow relieving. The night was over. Eggs were served and we were told we could go soon, and about 7am they let us out. Being let out into the thin morning light of Thanksgiving Day, was wonderful. The relief of fresh air now seems obscene next to the awful news. The city was quiet — is it over? We thought so, and couldn’t have known then that the seige wouldn’t end for many more hours.
Editor’s note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst. His most recent book is “The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda’s Leader.”
Peter Bergen
CNN National Security Analyst
The congressionally authorized Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism issued a report this week that concluded: “It is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013.”
The findings of this report received considerable ink in The New York Times and The Washington Post and plenty of airtime on networks around the world, including on CNN. And the day the report was released Vice President-elect Joseph Biden was briefed on its contents.
So is the sky falling?
Not really. Terrorists have already used weapons of mass destruction in the past decade in attacks around the world, and they have proven to be something of a dud.
Jeanne Meserve
CNN Homeland Security Correspondent
**See CNN Terrorism Analyst Peter Bergen’s take on the WMD report tonight at 10pm on AC360
Imagination isn’t a good thing if you cover homeland security. You mull over all kinds of threats, and spin out all kinds of scenarios. But none has haunted me the way biological terror has.
The new report from the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction underscores the danger. It tells us that terrorists are likely to hit in the next five years using a weapon of mass destruction…most likely a biological weapon.
For a sense of what that would mean take a look at The Great Influenza, a powerful book about the epidemic of 1918 which killed 20 to 40 million people worldwide. In excruciating detail author John Barry writes about the disease and what it wrought. Then imagine something like that in our world.
M.J. Gohel and Sajjan Gohel
Asia-Pacific Foundation
The Indian media have described the Mumbai terrorist siege as India’s 9/11.
The targets for the attacks, many of them symbols of Mumbai’s growing power and wealth, were not randomly selected and were intended to send a direct message to India, Israel and the West.
Indeed, the Mumbai attacks had all the hallmarks of a powerful transnational terrorist group inspired by the ideology of al Qaeda.
Mumbai is no stranger to terrorism.
On March 12, 1993, a series of 15 bombs exploded across several districts of India’s financial capital, killing 257. On July 11, 2006, a coordinated bombing spree on the city’s transportation system killed 209 people.
Uniquely disturbing about the recent Mumbai attacks, in addition to killing locals, is the deliberate targeting of restaurants and hotels used by Westerners and a Jewish cultural center.
Mumbai is to India as New York is to the United States or London to the United Kingdom. The city is driving India’s economic boom.
It is the commercial and entertainment capital of the country, where the “Bollywood” film industry is based. It is the heartbeat of India. What happens there vibrates throughout the nation.
Three factors may help explain the timing of the attacks.
Ken Robinson
Security analyst & former military intelligence officer
Many reports from Mumbai cite gunfire and “grenade” explosions coming from the 5-Star Taj Mahal hotel, the scene of previous terrorist attacks.
It is very possible the gunfire and explosions are actually “room clearing” tactics used by Counter Terrorism forces as they clear rooms.
The tactic of choice is to use what’s known as a Flash Bang Simulator, which creates a loud, explosive shock wave, enabling the CT forces to enter a room dynamically, gain a tactical advantage, and overwhelm anyone barracaded inside.
Paul Cruickshank
NYU Center on Law and Security
Editor’s note: This article was published today in The Guardian of London. Don’t miss Cruickshank on tonight’s show.
India’s commercial and cultural capital has been witnessing a terrorist attack whose ambition and scope has led seasoned observers to call it “India’s 9/11″. But just who was responsible? Shortly after the attacks started, several Indian newspapers reported receiving messages from an unknown group calling itself “Deccan Mujahedeen” and claiming responsibility for the attacks. Could this unknown group be responsible? The answer is almost certainly no.
The nature of the attack - something akin to scores of heavily armed terrorists storming the Waldorf Astoria and Ritz Carlton in New York City and then going on a shooting rampage through Times Square and the Upper East side - suggests months of painstaking logistical and operational planning. Only an established militant group would have had the ability to carry out such an attack. The Deccan Mujahedeen is not such a group.
If capability and track record are anything to go by, it is likely that the attack was either carried out by Indian Mujahedeen, an indigenous Indian militant group or a Kashmiri militant group with ties to al-Qaida such as Lashkar e Toiba, or some combination of the two.
Indian Mujahedeen first emerged as a terrorist threat in India exactly a year ago when it launched attacks in the north of India. Since then it has carried out about a half dozen attacks across the country, most recently launching an attack on a market place in New Delhi in September. Its signature tactic has been to set off multiple explosive devices simultaneously in crowded public spaces such as market places and buses. Hundreds have died in these attacks. Indian Mujahedeen has not to date carried out the sort of brazen armed attack seen in Mumbai in the last days. But it does appear to have had some access in the past to RDX, a military high explosive, which has reportedly now been discovered in Mumbai. On September 23 Mumbai police arrested five suspected Indian Mujahideen leaders in the Mumbai area and found a quantity of RDX in their possession. Also found in their possession was a large amount of ammunition, including ammonium nitrate rods, detonators and sub machine guns.
Watch Canadian Jonathan Ehrlich describe his harrowing and narrow escape from the Oberoi Hotel in Mumbai.
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