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afrol.com, 17 February - "The hijacked airplane was to explode over the Eiffel Tower" of Paris, said Omar Chikhi, ex-leader of the Armed Muslim Group (GIA)in an interview with the Algerian newspaper El Youm today, referring to a hijacked Air France Airbus in 1994, where thre passengers were killed. - The aim of the operationa was to demonstrate strength to get the French government change its policy towards Algeria dramatically, said Omar Chaiki. His GIA group has been responsible for terrorist actions internationally, but mostly in Algeria, where tens of thousands of civilians have been summarily killed. The Air France aircraft was supposed to have been hijacked on New Years eve 1994, but fearing that the police would discover their plan, the terrorist group hastened the operation, which was executed on Christmas Eve 1994. Due to this decission, all the members could not participate, and the "Eiffel Tower paln" could not be executed. Four terrorists hijacked the airplane and killed three passengers before they forced it to land in Marseille. Here, the plane was raided by French elite soldiers two days later. The French soldiers managed to kill the hijackers and free the remaining passengers. If the "Eiffel Tower plan" had been executed, all the passengers would have died. In the interview, Omar Chikhi also confirmed that it had been the GIF that had killed seven Christian monks in the Medea area two years later. Again, the killing of these civilians had had the aim of making the French government stop its aid the the government in Algiers. The ex-GIF leader also confessed to personally have murdered journalists when participating in the fighting. - I don't regret anything, he said in the interview. "It's more like that there still are many journalists I would like to have in my hands, and I would not hesitate killing them. We were fighting with the swords against those fighting us with the pen," he said. In the name of the free press, we dare Omar Chikhi, who in our view is blasphemic when he claims to be fighting in the name of Islam. He will never be man enough to fight a pen with a pen. By Rainer Chr. Hennig, afrol.com
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