Package bomb in Paris kills one
One killed by Paris parcel bomb
A parcel bomb explosion has killed one person and injured at least five others at law offices in central Paris.
The former law firm of President Nicolas Sarkozy is located in the same building as the office where the device exploded, at 52 Boulevard Malesherbes.
…
Another parcel bomb arrived at the same address, but remained unopened, officials said.
But this is what caught my attention:
The building also houses The Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah – a Holocaust remembrance body.
The package was delivered to the fourth floor of the building.
The police are searching for a motive.
UPDATE
Was the motive sexual harrassment?
December 7th, 2007 at 2:15 am
I’m increasingly becoming convinced that the motive is “for the thrill of it.”
GM’s Corner
December 7th, 2007 at 3:05 am
or, maybe, somehow, Jihadist . . . perhaps
December 7th, 2007 at 11:42 am
The first and most important lead seems to be the harassment one according to what I read in the news today:
“Un Homme en Garde à Vue…
December 7th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Whoops–stuck this comment on the wrong post–let’s try again–
The article says the police are “going with a sexual-harassment-personal-vendetta motive.” Apparently the French like to name their motives with as many words as they name their wines.
December 7th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Well, it does make sense – the guy they’re looking at right now probably did have a vendetta against the lawyer as she did file a harassment suit against him.
My understanding of ‘garde de vue’ is that the police are supposed to be watching you, but it’s not like a restraining order here. Those do exist over there, but they’re extremely hard to get. If this does turn out to be vendetta over harassment thing, I wonder if a restraining order would have helped.
December 7th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Seems to me the French are very good at restraining themselves as a whole–but maybe that is just on an international scale.
December 7th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Internationally, France works for France’s own interests, which unfortunately over the past few decades, have not much coincided with the US’s. The current president talks a good game, but recent actions (selling nuclear technology to Algeria and Libya; lobbying for the lifting of the arms embargo on China) seem to indicate that not much is going to change.
Domestically, there’s a problem with police/judicial restraint. This is a huge mess, and I don’t know that either the interior minister (Alliot) or the minister of justice (Dati) are up to the task of fixing stuff that’s been broken for a long time.