France signed an agreement with a Palestinian terror group in the 1980s establishing that authorities would not arrest the organization's members as long as it refrained from committing attacks on French soil, a former top spy revealed this week.

This information, which the French government has denied, was recently revealed by former French spy chief Yves Bonnet and was first published in the newspaper Le Parisien.

Bonnet discussed the verbal agreement between Paris and the Abu Nidal organization struck during a secret meeting between French intelligence and the group. The agreement followed an attack by the organization at a deli in Paris's Jewish quarter. Six people were killed in that attack, in which the attackers threw grenades and shot at diners with machine guns.

Bonnet said that he had guaranteed safety for members of the group as long as they did not launch attacks on French soil, and that he was unconcerned with attacks by the group in Italy, according to Le Parisien. The newspaper also quoted Bonnet as saying that the Elysee officially knew nothing about the deal, but that then President Francois Mitterand's chief of staff was informed about it.

In France, the agreement paid off in the form of quiet for a few years, while the group continued to commit attacks in Italy, Austria, and Greece. The group eventually split up over internal disagreements. During its years of activity, hundreds of people were wounded or killed in dozens of countries in its attacks. Among the attacks were plane hijackings and shootings in a synagogue and in embassies. Its members attempts to assassin Israel's ambassador in London in 1982.

Bonnet's admission has led to calls for a thorough investigation of the matter, and into the possibility of similar agreements with other groups. </s> Families of the victims of a 1982 terrorist attack in Paris are demanding a parliamentary inquiry after reports that the former chief of French intelligence made a secret pact with the perpetrators.

They have called on President Emmanuel Macron to declassify the top-secret file of the attack, which killed six and injured 22 others.

At lunchtime on 9 August 1982 a masked and armed commando entered Jo Goldenberg’s restaurant in the rue des Rosiers, in Paris’s Jewish quarter. The terrorists threw a grenade into the room then began shooting at diners and staff with machine guns. They threw a second grenade as they left. The attack lasted three minutes and the terrorists vanished into the district’s labyrinth of streets.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chez Jo Goldenberg in Paris two days after gunmen shot at customers with sub-machine guns, killing six and injuring 22. Photograph: Joel Robine/AFP

Investigators linked the attack to Fatah: the Revolutionary Council, established by Sabri Khalil al-Banna, known as Abu Nidal, whose dissident Palestinian group had split from Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organisation. The Abu Nidal Organisation, as it was also known, was considered one of the most ruthless of the Palestinian militant groups. It was thought to be responsible for attacks in 20 countries which killed more than 300 people, including in Rome and Vienna airports in 1985.

On Friday, Le Parisien newspaper reported that the former head of France’s intelligence service Yves Bonnet had admitted negotiating a “secret deal” with the terrorist group. Now 83, Bonnet is said to have told investigators that he agreed the group’s members could continue travelling to France if they carried out no more attacks on French soil.

“We made a kind of verbal deal in which I said I don’t want any more attacks on French soil and in return I’ll let you come to France and I guarantee nothing will happen to you,” Bonnet reportedly said in an interview with investigating magistrates in January.

“And it worked. There were no further attacks between the end of 1983 and the end of 1985 … afterwards, they carried out attacks in Italy, for example, but that did not concern me as long as there was nothing on French soil.”

'Mastermind' of 1982 Jewish cafe attack in Paris arrested in Jordan Read more

Bonnet claimed the then French president François Mitterrand’s chief of staff was informed of the deal, but that “officially … the Élysée knew nothing”. Investigators, also kept in the dark over the deal, have asked to interview other members of the intelligence services who have refused to speak until now, claiming it was a matter of national security.

Yohann Taïeb, the president of the support committee representing victims’ families, said that, if confirmed, Bonnet’s admission was “shameful”. He called on Macron to “declassify documents and take decisions about eventual legal proceedings”.

Avi Bitton, a lawyer for the families, told Le Parisien: “We need a parliamentary inquiry not just on the rue des Rosiers attack but to establish if such secret pacts were sealed with other terrorist organisations.”

Lawyers representing the families have also demanded the extradition of four suspects currently in Jordan and Norway. </s> As Jews in France and around the world on Friday marked the 37th anniversary of a deadly terrorist attack on a kosher restaurant in Paris, one of the country’s news outlets revealed that the former chief of French intelligence entered into a secret pact with the Palestinian group behind the massacre.

Six people were murdered and 22 wounded on Aug. 9, 1982, when terrorists from the radical Abu Nidal Organization armed with machine guns opened fire on diners at “Chez Jo Goldenberg” on the rue des Rosiers during the restaurant’s busy lunchtime service. After exploding a grenade as they made their escape, the terrorists quickly disappeared into the streets of the Marais, the old Jewish quarter of Paris where the restaurant was located.

On Friday, the newspaper Le Parisien reported that the former head of French intelligence, Yves Bonnet, had admitted to making a secret pact with the terrorists, guaranteeing Abu Nidal operatives free movement within France in exchange for a promise of no further attacks on French soil.

According to Le Parisien, Bonnet made his confession in January this year to the magistrate in charge of investigating the Jo Goldenberg attack, for which no person has yet been convicted.

“We made a kind of verbal deal in which I said, ‘I don’t want any more attacks on French soil and in return I’ll let you come to France and I guarantee nothing will happen to you,’” the paper quoted Bonnet as having said.

The pact was allegedly reached during a clandestine meeting shortly after the attack between Bonnet and representatives of the Abu Nidal group — not the terrorists who executed the massacre, he claimed, but individuals he described as their “stooges.”

According to Bonnet, the pact “worked,” insofar as there were no attacks on French soil “from late ’83, ’84 and until the end of 1985,” he said. Among the concessions made during that time by the DST, the French intelligence service, was the permission for two Abu Nidal terrorists to visit one of their comrades in a French prison.

Le Parisien added that it had partially confirmed Bonnet’s claim of a pact with Abu Nidal with two former DST officials, Jean-François Clair and Louis Caprioli. The paper said it had been told by Clair that he did “not deny that there were contacts with Abu Nidal, to do so would be lying.”

Also in the loop, the paper said, was Gilles Menage, the chief of staff to the then President of France, François Mitterrand — although the official position was that the Élysée Palace “did not know anything” about the contacts with Abu Nidal, a renegade Palestinian faction that was armed and funded by Iraq at the time of the rue des Rosiers attack. Abu Nidal’s long list of atrocities also included the Sept. 1986 shooting at the Neve Shalom synagogue in Istanbul, Turkey, that killed 22 worshippers, and the December 1985 simultaneous attacks on US and Israeli airport counters in Rome and Vienna, which killed 18 people and injured 111.

Yohann Taïeb, the president of the support committee representing victims’ families, said that, if confirmed, Bonnet’s admission was “shameful”. He called on French President Emmanuel Macron to “declassify documents and take decisions about eventual legal proceedings”.

Avi Bitton, a lawyer for the families, told Le Parisien: “We need a parliamentary inquiry not just on the rue des Rosiers attack but to establish if such secret pacts were sealed with other terrorist organizations.”

Friday’s revelations about the possible collusion between Abu Nidal and French intelligence came on top of another significant, if frustrating, development in the rue des Rosiers investigation earlier this year. In May, Jordan’s highest court rejected a French appeal for the extradition of one of the suspected terrorists, 57-year-old Nizar Tawfiq Mussa Hamada.

Hamada was not formally identified until 2014, when two anonymous informants associated with Abu Nidal’s group supplied the French authorities with critical information about the terrorists’ identities. In 2015, France’s top magistrate tasked with combating terrorism, Marc Trévidic, issued arrest warrants for several suspects, including Hamada and fellow Jordanian citizen Souhair Mouhamed Hassan Khalid al-Abassi — aka Amjad Atta — reputedly the mastermind behind the attack. </s> JTA — France agreed not to target Palestinian terrorists who killed French Jews in Paris in 1982 if they refrained from carrying out further attacks on French soil, a former top spy revealed.

Yves Bonnet, who headed the now-defunct DST service in the 1980s, said this in January to a judge investigating the 1982 attack in which six people were murdered and 22 injured at a kosher restaurant on Rosiers Street in Paris, Le Parisien reported Thursday.

Friday marked the 37th anniversary of the attack, then the deadliest anti-Semitic attack on French soil since World War II, in which the terrorists threw grenades into the packed restaurant.

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The suspects in the attack on the Jo Goldbenberg deli are wanted for questioning as per a 2015 French arrest warrant. One of the suspects lives in Jordan, another near Ramallah in the West Bank and a third in Norway, according to the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities.

None of the relevant governments have agreed to extradite the suspects, whom French investigators believe belonged to the Abu Nidal terrorist group affiliated with Fatah.

“We entered a sort of verbal deal which tells them: I want no more attacks on French soil, but I will allow you to come to France and guarantee nothing will happen to you,” Bonnet said

French authorities allowed two of the alleged perpetrators to visit their brothers in arms in French prisons after the 1982 attack.

“It worked, there were no further attacks from the end of 1983, throughout 1984 and until 1985,” Bonnet said.

Times of Israel Staff contributed to this report </s> Thirty-seven years after Palestinian terrorists killed six people at a deli in Paris's Jewish quarter, the families of the victims are demanding a parliamentary inquiry – on the back of media reports that a former French spy admitted to making a secret deal with the perpetrators.

A further 22 people were wounded on 9 August, 1982, when two gunmen stormed the Jo Goldenberg restaurant in the middle of the day, opening fire and throwing grenades at customers.

The men are believed to have belonged to a radical group led by Palestinian militant Abu Nidal, which was active in the 1970s and 1980s.

According to reports this week in the daily Le Parisien, former head of French intelligence Yves Bonnet told a judge in January he had assured Abu Nidal that members of his group would not be arrested if they refrained from committing further attacks on French soil.

It is understood that the then French President Francois Mitterand's chief of staff was informed of the deal but that “officially … the Élysée knew nothing”.
• Golden days are gone, but Paris's Jewish quarter still has rich story to tell

The victims' families are now calling on President Emmanuel Macron to declassify files of the attack.

Avi Bitton, a lawyer for several of the families, told France Info radio: “We will ask the investigating judge to make requests to lift the lid on this file, so that he can investigate this possible secret agreement between the French state and this terrorist organisation.

"The French have the right to know that their government has made a secret agreement with a terrorist group."

A total of six people are believed to have been involved in planning and carrying out the attack on the restaurant, which was located on the Rue des Rosiers, in Paris's central Marais neighborhood, before it closed in 2006.

In 2016, Jordan rejected an extradition request from France for two suspects accused of carrying out the attack linked to the dissident Palestinian group The Abu Nidal Organisation.

Abu Nidal, whose real name was Sabri Banna, is understood to have committed suicide in Iraq in 2002.

His organisation was considered one of the most ruthless of the Palestinian militant groups, responsible for attacks in 20 countries which killed more than 300 people, including in Rome and Vienna during the 1980s.
Le Parisien claims French ex-head of security Yves Bonnet [fr] brokered a secret deal with Fatah in the 1980s offering immunity in exchange for no further terror attacks in France.