The rioters and their admirers––on the right and the left.
by Michel Gurfinkiel
Paris
Mama Galledou, a 26–year–old student from Senegal, had just completed work on her degree in nutrition at the Saint Jerome Faculty of Science and Technology in Marseille. She will probably never lead a normal life again––if she survives at all: She was nearly burned alive on October 28 as she was traveling by bus through Marseille's 13th district, where the Saint Jerome campus is located. It was 9:00 P.M. The bus was almost empty. At the bus stop near Cit? des Lilas, a public housing estate, three young men had earlier blocked the doors and asked the driver to wait for their friends. The driver obliged for a minute or two, and then got impatient, shut the doors, and left. The youths shouted that they would take their revenge. So they did, a bit later on, as the bus was driving the same road back and stopped again at Cit? des Lilas. Two of the boys got on by the rear entrance, sprinkled gasoline, and set it alight. The horrified passengers rushed out. Somehow, Galledou's clothes caught fire. According to one witness, "it was as if someone peeled her skin with an invisible knife: from a black woman she was turning into a white one." At the local hospital, they reported burns over 62 percent of her body. She remains in a coma, fighting to survive.

PARIS (AP) – The French president's office says that a former member of the Italian left–wing Red Brigades terrorist group won't be extradited to Italy because of ill health.

PARIS (AP) – Police say they have released four people detained in western France on suspicion they were plotting a terrorist attack.

VILLIERS–LE–BEL, France (AP) — More than 1,000 police officers, some wearing black hoods, raided housing projects outside Paris in a massive sweep yesterday, kicking open doors and detaining 33 persons in a search for rioters who led an outburst of violence last year, a prosecutor said.

Critics called the early morning operation, captured on television cameras, a "security spectacle" aimed at bolstering President Nicolas Sarkozy before municipal elections next month.

A French judge has charged two police officers in connection with the electrocution of two teenagers whose deaths in 2005 set off three weeks of suburban violence across the country. The judge in the Paris suburb of...

Sarkozy: Rudy–style savior for France?October 31, 2006 –– FRANCE today is a lot like New York City was before Rudy Giuliani: Its government is so large it crushes the economy – yet also too weak to stem widespread criminality. As with pre–Rudy New York, the fear that France's best days are behind it prevails.

Standing next to a bag full of West African CDs, Ricardo Elumbu watched the steady flow of commuters hurrying into the grimy train station at Sevran, a 20–minute ride from downtown Paris. Yellow leaves floated through...

CLICHY–SOUS–BOIS, France –– Two public buses were torched in a Paris suburb yesterday, the anniversary of the two deaths that ignited weeks of riots in largely immigrant housing projects across France a year ago.
Both buses were burned in Blanc Mesnil, a northern Paris suburb near Clichy–sous–Bois, where last year's violence began, police said.

PARIS ? Hundreds of young people from the poor, immigrant suburbs of Paris that erupted in riots last year marched through Paris on Wednesday to present a collection of 20,000 complaints to lawmakers and urge the disenfranchised to make themselves heard with a vote, not violence.

Hours later, six to 10 young people forced passengers off a public bus in a western Paris suburb and set the vehicle on fire, officials said.

Radical Muslims in France's housing estates are waging an undeclared "intifada," or uprising, against the police, with violent clashes injuring about 14 officers each day.

A French teacher hiding from Islamist death threats says he has been abandoned by the Education Ministry and has to arrange for his own safe houses when police bodyguards move him every two days.

President Jacques Chirac said Thursday that France was prepared to launch a nuclear strike against any country that sponsors a terrorist attack against French interests. He said his country's nuclear arsenal had been...(Let's see now, how do we figure out which country launched a terror attack. This is just like the French. Big mouth, no action. bbm)