It’s 5:34 p.m. this Monday, December 26. The eyes of the world are turned towards France, more precisely towards the tarmac of Marseille airport, in Marignane, to witness the end of a little more than 54 hours of tension and horror. The year is 1994 and the Air France Airbus A300 has just been freed by the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN) after 17 minutes of a very intense assault.
A successful operation: none of the 172 hostages and 12 crew members were killed. No soldiers either, nine of them having been injured more or less seriously.
An event which brings the GIGN into the ranks of the world's major intervention units and which also marks the beginning of a new era, that of Islamist terrorism in France. “These were the beginnings of the twin towers of New York“, slips Jean-Luc Calyel, one of these super policemen.
Because two days earlier, on Saturday December 24, when flight AF8969 was due to take off at 11 a.m. from Houari Boumediene airport in Algiers, heading for Paris-Orly, four heavily armed men burst into the plane. They present themselves as police officers carrying out an identity check. They are in reality members of the GIA, the Armed Islamic Group, a terrorist organization created during the Algerian civil war which opposes the government of Algeria, from whom they demand the release of two leaders of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) .
