Grade Level: SrH-Adult
Producer: BBC
Closed Captioned: No |
Running Time: 50 mins
Country of Origin: Great Britain
Study Guide: No |
Copyright Date: 2008
Available in French: No
|
1994. As an Air France plane was preparing to leave Algiers airport, four men dressed in uniforms entered the plane to check passports. But they were not officials of the Algerian authorities; they were members of the GIA, an Islamist extremist group who had been slaughtering thousands across Algeria for the last two years. They were part of a vicious, brutalising civil war that had engulfed Algeria since the elections which gave the Islamic party victory were cancelled by the military. The men hijacked the plane and demanded it be flown to Paris. Two days elapsed and three passengers were executed before the Algerian authorities allowed the flight to depart for Marseille. At Marseille, the terrorists demanded 27 tonnes of fuel to fly on to Paris. The French authorities then realised that they had no intention of landing in Paris and negotiating the release of the hostages. Instead, they were planning to use the plane as a missile and crash it into the heart of Paris, in a terrifying prototype of 9/11. An elite team of French commandos raided the plane, killing the terrorists and liberating the passengers. France cracked down on Islamist extremists in its midst, many of whom fled to England and ‘Londonistan' was born. A new combustible form of terror had arrived: the struggle of one country mixed with devotion to religious extremism. The result was a commitment to a spectacular war on the non-believer, a war that made no distinction between guilty and innocent, combatant and civilian. This terror was being waged on the near enemy, Algeria and France, but the sacred war was about to be spread in all directions across the globe. |
