A breakthrough in the investigation into the 1982 terrorist attack at the Chez Jo Goldenberg Jewish deli in Paris, which killed six people and wounded 22, sheds light on one of the more disgraceful chapters in French history.
Following the attack, French authorities reportedly agreed to a secret pact with Palestinian terrorist organization behind the massacre – the Abu Nidal group – guaranteeing Abu Nidal operatives free movement within France in exchange for a promise of no further attacks on French soil.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
French newspaper Le Parisien reported over the weekend that in January of this year the former head of French domestic intelligence (DST) Yves Bonnet, confessed to making the deal to the magistrate in charge of investigating the terrorist attack.
"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." Among the concessions made during that time by the DST was the permission for two Abu Nidal terrorists to visit one of their comrades in a French prison.
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.
Families of the victims are now demanding a parliamentary inquiry and have called on French President Emmanuel Macron to declassify the top-secret file of the attack.
Avi Bitton, a lawyer for the families, told Le Parisien: "We need a parliamentary inquiry not just on the [Chez Jo Goldenberg] attack but to establish if such secret pacts were sealed with other terrorist organizations."
Lawyers representing the families have also demanded the extradition of four suspects currently in Jordan and Norway.
