PARIS — France confronted a new incident of youth violence Wednesday, a rampage that terrorized passengers as their train rolled west along the Riviera on New Year's Day.
The ordeal became front-page news Wednesday in a nation still on edge from riots in November in immigrant-dominated urban areas.
Authorities were criticized for leaving about 600 passengers at the mercy of youths who allegedly robbed, roughed up and sexually assaulted victims for at least 25 minutes as the 10-car regional train traveled from Nice toward Marseilles.
The youths were among about 100 suspected troublemakers whom police had rounded up in Nice and put on the train to send them home to communities around Marseilles and Avignon.
Passengers tried to barricade themselves in compartments as assailants trashed the train and threatened to kill victims who used cellphones to call for help, authorities said.
After police boarded at Les Arcs-Draguignan station, shaken passengers took refuge in a cafe, a waitress told reporters Wednesday.
Police identified four victims and arrested six people on suspicion of robbery, making death threats and sexual molestation.
Witness accounts suggested that more assailants and victims were involved, but could not be identified.
Two suspects are 19-year-old Moroccan immigrants living in Avignon. The four others are juveniles, who were not identified, in accordance with French law.From CUANAS, January 7, 2006:
How is it that it took nearly a week for the French to admit that 600 citizens were attacked on a public train?
Politicians are responsible for this outrage. So are the media. And I'll include the universities and churches. Our intelligentsia and our moral leaders are criminals.
It's past time to rid ourselves of these people and reform our world from the bottom up.
If our moral leaders and our cultural and intellectual leaders believe in nothing at all, then they have no authority whatsoever, and we must rid ourselves of them and replace them with men and women who have some real moral standing.
What is moral? By what authority? We live in a pluralistic world, and we must find a universal moral for a plurality, one that has authority for all regardless of race, creed, or religion. If we failat that, then Islam and dhimmitude await us.
Today a train, and we cower in fear waiting for rescue by police who have no authority to use force against criminals. Tomorrow a school in which children are exploded, and our police haven't got the competence to rescue them.
Next day we're blown up riding the tube to work or killed in our offices or burned to death in ships defending the world and ourselves. And yet we don't fight because we don't have anything we feel we should fight for, not even our very lives, they being too meaningless to defend.
We require a moral reformation or we are lost forever.If the government of France will not take care of it's citizens, then, it is time for the people of France to overthrow their government.