France Captures Four Leaders of Terrorist Group

Special French police raided an isolated farmhouse near Orleans on the weekend and captured four of France’s most-wanted terrorist suspects without firing a shot in a dramatic turn in France’s battle against urban guerrillas.

The Saturday night capture, announced by police on Sunday, netted the leaders of the terrorist organization Direct Action. Two of the four are women suspected of gunning down and killing Georges Besse, the president of the Renault auto company, on a Paris street three months ago.

French government officials were delighted by the successful raid. President Francois Mitterrand sent a message to Premier Jacques Chirac congratulating all police officers involved. Mitterrand called it “a precious encouragement for intensifying the struggle that the state must wage without fail to dispose of the threat of terrorists.”

Any mood of exultation was tempered, however, by the impending trial in Paris today of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, a Lebanese charged with complicity in the murder of an American military attache and an Israeli diplomat in Paris in 1982 and in the attempted murder of an American consul in Strasbourg in 1984.

Fearing a resumption of bombings by relatives and associates of Abdallah, the government has reinforced police forces in Paris and assigned them in groups of four to patrol the streets with automatic rifles. A wave of bombings last year by terrorists seeking the release of Abdallah killed 11 persons and wounded more than 160 in Paris.

The capture of the Direct Action leaders reduced the threat but only a little. Some government officials had feared that Direct Action, which is not specifically linked to Abdallah, might attempt a terrorist act to show solidarity with his cause.

5 Killings, 80 Bombings

Government officials believe that Direct Action is responsible for five killings and 80 bombings and other acts of terrorism during the last eight years.

Police listed those captured as Jean-Marc Rouillan, 34, regarded as the founder and leader of Direct Action; his longtime companion, Nathalie Menigon, 29, the co-founder and leader; Joelle Aubron, 27, and Georges Cipriani, 35. The photos of Menigon and Aubron have been circulated throughout France for three months in 80,000 official posters describing them as wanted for the murder of Besse. Direct Action boasted that it had killed him.

The raid took place near Orleans in the Loire River valley, 60 miles south of Paris. Police said the four captured suspects, although armed, “were neutralized without offering any resistance because of the speed of the intervention.”

The Ministry of Interior, in a statement, said that “an important stock of arms and explosives as well as documents and sums of money were seized on the spot.” Some of the documents, according to the police, were linked to the killing of Besse, and others had lists of people targeted for kidnaping or killing.

Police said that one of the six rooms in the farmhouse had been arranged so that it could hold a hostage.

Tip From Informer

Europe-1 Radio reported that police, acting on a tip from an informer that Menigon was hiding in the farmhouse, had kept it under surveillance for several days. Police felt certain they had the right suspect, according to Europe-1 Radio, when they found out she was breeding hamsters on the farm--a hobby of Menigon, according to police files.

When Aubron and Cipriani joined the two leaders, Rouillan and Menigon, on the farm, police said, Minister of Interior Charles Pasqua gave police the order to sweep down and take the four.

The raid was carried out by a special anti-terrorist squad known as RAID from the initials for Research, Assistance, Intervention and Dissuasion.

Neighbors said that Rouillan and Menigon had lived on the farm for three years and had not attracted much attention. One, however, said on national television that she had wondered why they hardly ever went anywhere but remained in the farmhouse most of the time.

This was not the first time that Rouillan, Menigon and Aubron have been in police custody. Rouillan and Menigon, who founded Direct Action in 1979, were arrested a year later but were released in 1981 by Mitterrand under a presidential amnesty. In those days, however, Direct Action was regarded as a violent, militant, extreme leftist organization that bombed targets but never tried to kill anyone.

Aubron was released in 1984 after serving part of a four-year sentence for illegal possession of weapons.

Police Killed in Gun Battle

The first bloodshed came in 1983 when two police were killed in a gun battle on a Paris street, Direct Action insisted, however, that the killings were not intentional.

In January, 1985, however, the strategy of Direct Action changed. Direct Action announced that it had joined forces with two foreign radical organizations--the Red Army Faction of West Germany and the Fighting Communist Cells of Belgium--to form “a Communist guerrilla group in Western Europe to fight against NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and the ‘Paris-Bonn axis.’ ”

A few weeks later, Direct Action murdered Gen. Rene Audran, the French Ministry of Defense official in charge of arms procurement.

Direct Action attempted but failed to kill two other prominent Frenchmen before murdering Besse last November. Two women waited in the shadows of his home street in Paris and gunned him down as he walked to his house. A policeman was also killed in July, 1986, when a bomb exploded at the Paris headquarters of the police anti-crime division.

Regis Schleicher, 26, the husband of Aubron, was put on trial in Paris last year for the murder of the two Paris policemen in 1983, but the trial was halted when his threats to kill the jurors frightened them into withdrawing. The threats prompted the National Assembly to pass a law providing for suspected terrorists to be tried before a panel of seven magistrates without a jury. The names of the magistrates have been kept secret and they were placed under around-the-clock police protection. Abdallah, 35, will be the first defendant tried under the new law.