A total of seven men were arrested, some in Basel and Zurich on May 12 and others elsewhere in Switzerland . The alleged plot that was uncovered involved an unspecified attack against Israeli airliner El Al. The Attorney General’s Office would not release details on the attack or where the attack might have taken place. However, a statement was released: “this cell had very seriously envisaged committing an attack in our country on an airliner belonging to the El Al airline.” As yet, there have also been no explosives found.
Interestingly, one of the seven men arrested has direct links to Mohamed Achraf , an Algerian who was arrested in Switzerland and extradited to Spain in 2005 for his plot to bomb a courthouse in Madrid .
Police contend that the cell was in contact with a network throughout Spain and France, although no specific details were offered to support this notion. The article, however, details that various robberies in Switzerland in 2005 lead authorities?Swiss, French, and Spanish police?to an unidentified terrorist organization. The Attorney General’s Office, according to The Telegraph, contended that authorities had been involved in a “Europe-wide investigation into connected terror groups” (source).
At first glance, ETA comes to mind as possibly responsible for the plot. However, ETA has no interests outside of the Basque region and launches attacks against the sitting Spanish government to achieve its goal of independence from Spain . Since the Madrid attacks , ETA has fallen into disfavor with the Spanish population, and antiterrorism crackdowns have diminished the group’s ability to launch large scale attacks like the one planned against El Al. As such, it is unlikely that ETA is involved in this plot.
The fact that North Africans are involved may lead to the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GCIM) , which also has a presence in France and Spain, has been involved in criminal enterprises, and was involved in the Madrid attacks in 2004 and the Casablanca attack in 2003 . One of the main goals of the group is to establish an Islamic Caliphate, and being a jihadist organization, it is vehemently anti-Israel, justifying an attack against Israel’s flagship airline. The group is believed to have cells sprinkled throughout Europe, and while Switzerland has not surfaced specifically as a host country, it cannot be discounted as a possibility. Both attacks were simultaneous in nature, much like al-Qaeda’s hallmark, so it would not have been off the mark to expect the El Al attacks to have targeted multiple airplanes simultaneously. There is very little known about the GCIM, and some authorities suspect adherents may be part of the wider al-Qaeda jihadist movement. The US lists the GCIM as one of 42 Foreign Terrorist Organizations (source).
This would not be the first time that El Al was targeted by terrorism. The airline is now famous for its precision security and its armed airline attendants due to prolific hostage-taking throughout the 1970s (Terrorist Incident and Terrorist Incident) and bombing campaigns in the 1980s (Terrorist Incident, Terrorist Incident, and Terrorist Incident). An Israeli plane was also targeted in Kenya in 2002 at the same time as an Israeli-owned hotel was targeted . An imprisoned cell in Los Angeles had plotted to attack El Al in July 2005 . El Al was believed to have been targeted in December 2005 in a plot to shoot down an airliner with a rocket-propelled grenade in Geneva (Terrorist Incident forthcoming). According to Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, the plot was foiled by Swiss and French authorities.
In conclusion, a planned attack against El Al cannot be discounted. However, for an organization to attempt a 9/11 -style attack against a heavily-secured civilian aircraft would likely prove unsuccessful. El Al, further, is the only civilian airline that has anti-MANPAD technology to counter surface-to-air missile attacks. Bombing an El Al office, as was done in Italy in the 1980s, would do little for a jihadist cause, or any other cause for that matter. But, on a larger scale, if authorities have arrested the key players in this cell, there can be cautious jubilation that mass murder has been thwarted. Complacency and pomposity, however, cannot seep in. Vigilance by any entity with a presence in Switzerland is advised, as there are simply no “safe countries” any more.
