A man and a woman appeared before the Criminal Court of Paris on Tuesday, February 13, for having sent bomb threat letters to the Elysee in the early 2000s.
Published on 02/13/2024 07:01
Reading time: 2 min
A classified ad left by the AZF group in Liberation for the Ministry of the Interior on February 19, 2004. (AFP)
“The 10,000 SNCF agents have finished inspecting the 32,000 kilometers of French railway lines without finding any trace of a bomb,” announced a journalist in March 2004. The cause: nine threat letters that have been piling up on the desks of the Elysee for two months. They are signed AZF, a group that defines itself as “terrorist” and claims to have hidden nine bombs under train tracks. Twenty years later, on Tuesday, February 13, a 76-year-old man and a 61-year-old woman appeared before the Criminal Court of Paris for criminal association, violation of legislation on explosives, and threats of destruction.
At the end of 2003 and the beginning of 2004, the AZF group demanded a ransom so that its bombs would not explode: $4 million and 1 million euros to be delivered in small denominations by helicopter from the top of the Tour Montparnasse in Paris. Initially, the authorities considered these threats to be whimsical delusions. But very quickly, the Ministry of the Interior became alarmed because, in early 2004, two very sophisticated explosive devices were found hidden under railway tracks.
Exchanges in classified ads
The Ministry of the Interior then decided to enter into negotiations with AZF through the classified ads of the newspaper Liberation using code names: “Suzy” for the ministry and “my big wolf” for AZF. For several weeks, the two exchanged encrypted messages to organize the delivery of the ransom, but the affair quickly leaked out, forcing Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior, to speak out. “At the moment I am speaking, we know nothing about this group, but we take the threat seriously. All police and gendarmerie services are mobilized at all times on this matter,” he said. A few days later, AZF announced in a final letter the suspension of its activities and never gave any further signs of life.
“My big wolf” therefore disappeared until 2018, when two people were arrested after a denunciation. Behind the pseudo-terrorist group were, in fact, a bankrupt company boss and one of his employees. The latter was reported to the gendarmes by a former lover. Very quickly, the duo admitted to being behind AZF, but they claimed that their goal was only to pocket the ransom. According to the business owner, the blackmail was never intended to “cause deaths”.
