the secret pact with the alleged perpetrators of the attack on rue des Rosiers which revolts the victims

On September 29, “Sensitive Affairs” devoted a program to the mysteries of the attack on rue des Rosiers. August 9, 1982, the attack on the restaurant Joe Goldenberg followed by a shooting in the middle of the street in the Jewish district of Marais, in Paris, left six dead and 22 injured. Forty-two years after the attack, the investigation is still underway…

Could the slowness of French justice be explained by a secret agreement between the State and the terrorist group suspected of having organized and carried out the attack? In this extract, a former head of French counter-espionage looks back on his revelations from 2018. Yves Bonnet, former head of the DST (Directorate of Territorial Surveillance), then admitted to having started talks with Abou Nidal, barely two years after the attack. “My mission, it was to ensure that there were no attacks on French territory. If you were in the life of a security service, you would know that yes, we discuss with the adversary, with the enemy. he justifies.

These discussions reached a milestone on July 12, 1984. In Vienna, Austria, French spies met two emissaries of Abu Nidal. The latter made a request: to visit two of their fellow fighters imprisoned in France for an assassination committed in the 1970s. “I have said okay, on one condition, says Yves Bonnet. This is because they undertake to never again commit an attack on French soil. They said yes. And they kept their word.”

The French state would therefore have authorized two members of the terrorist organization suspected of being responsible for the attack on rue des Rosiers to move freely in France… Is it not problematic to negotiate with such a group ? According to Yves Bonnet, the DST only responded to a request “very punctual” – and seize, according to him, “the opportunity to f make sure that there is never any more threat from that side.”.

The existence of this pact is confirmed in a confidential document signed by Abou Nidal, the head of the terrorist organization, obtained by “Affaires Sensitives”. He said this: “Our movement is committed to preserving the security of France with regard to common interests.”

In 2018, when they learned of the existence of this agreement through the press, the survivors of rue des Rosiers and the families of the victims cried foul. Incomprehensible, “filthy”, according to them, “make such an agreement”, which amounts to authorizing the perpetrators of the attack “to move freely provided they are well behaved”.

Would this agreement have offered a form of impunity to the perpetrators of the killings on Rue des Rosiers? Has it slowed down the work of justice to identify them? These questions which obsess the survivors and the victims’ relatives, the civil parties will be able to ask them during the upcoming trial. The hearing could also allow them to have the status of forgotten victims recognized, whose lives have been forever marked by this attack.