France finds no evidence to support US scare over Air France flights
Posted on 12/25/2003 8:07:15 PM PST by Happy2BMe
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France finds no evidence to support US scare over Air France flights
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Thu Dec 25,12:47 PM ET
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PARIS (AFP) - French authorities said they had found no evidence to support US suspicions of a Christmas Day extremist attack using Air France planes that prompted the cancellation of flights between Paris and Los Angeles and sparked a major international alert.
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Interior ministry and anti-terrorist police officials said a careful screening and questioning of passengers on the cancelled flights turned up no link to Al-Qaeda or other militant groups.
Six Air France flights -- three heading to and three coming from Los Angeles -- were cancelled Wednesday and Thursday after US officials contacted the French government to warn they had specific intelligence that Al-Qaeda intended to use the planes for an attack similar to the ones on September 11, 2001.
An emergency meeting of the French foreign, interior and transport ministries resulted in Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin ordering the cancellation of the flights Wednesday on the basis of the US information.
But French officials said Thursday careful checks of the passengers stranded in Paris had found nothing to suggest any terrorist link.
"No material or human element -- no matter how slight -- has been discovered. There have been no arrests, no detentions, no confiscations," a French police source told AFP.
An anti-terrorist investigator told AFP that there were "insufficient elements to justify opening a judicial inquiry."
He said the US intelligence given to the French counter-espionage service DST, based on wiretaps and other sources, had focused on one name that US authorities thought might be tied to Al-Qaeda.
But checks showed that the individual in question, a Tunisian man with a pilot's licence, was still in Tunisia, not France, and that he was not in French anti-terrorist files.
An Air France spokeswoman said the company's flights would resume as normal from Friday.
Police said teams of two to six armed officers in civilian clothes had since since Tuesday been travelling on certain flights to the United States from France as reinforcements for Air France's own on-board security agents.
In the United States, an American official speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity said the alert had been raised because of intercepted Al-Qaeda e-mails that spoke of an attack being plotted for the Christmas holiday using Air France planes. Other intelligence narrowed that to specific Air France flights, he said.
The scare came as US authorities subjected Los Angeles airport to its tightest security clampdown since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, in which suspected Al-Qaeda operatives hijacked US commercial aircraft and turned them into fuel-laden bombs, killing 3,000 people.
A nationwide attack alert scale in the United States was raised from "elevated" to "high" last weekend out of fear that another attack was likely.
Almost exactly two years ago a Briton, Richard Reid, tried to blow up an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami with explosives hidden in his shoes. Reid, 30, a self-proclaimed disciple of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) who had converted to Islam, was sentenced to life in prison in January for the December 22 attempted attack.
And nearly four years ago, a suspected bomb plot against LA airport that was thwarted when one of the bombers was arrested after crossing into the United States from Canada with explosives in his car.
France and the rest of Europe have also raised the general level of vigilance against possible attacks during the end-of-year Christmas season.
As well stepping up security at airports, railway stations and religious buildings, France has put its fighter planes on alert.
Police in Britain said security around the US embassy in London had also been beefed up. Trucks and other wide vehicles were blocked from using streets around the mission.
"This measure is being carried out in the light of worldwide events, particular current concerns about US interests and the fact that security in London remains at a high level," said a statement from Scotland Yard.
NEWSFLASH - the French have anti-terrorist files (at least one anyway) ping!
To France...
Yeah, but you gotta remember the Krauts knocked up lots of French whores before we gave them the boot . .
There's a much simpler explanation.
The specific warnings broadcast by US security, naming the nature of the threat with specificity, would very plausibly have caused Al Qaeda to call off the plan -- I mean, wouldn't you? So the Algerian pilot changed his plans and stayed in Algeria.
That's always going to be a likely outcome when US Intel announces the threat, thus notifying the terrorists that we're on to them. The alternative -- to be mum and try to catch them in the act -- would certainly put the public at unacceptable risk.
Maybe this has been refuted, but I had heard that the US didn't want the cancellations to be made public. They wanted to try to apprehend the suspects when they arrived at the gate...but the information leaked out. Regardless, with the propensity of al Qaeda to use false ids, I am not sure that names are the only thing they could use to discount a possible threat.
Did they check their Pro-terrorist files?
The Champagne...
The Cuisine...
The Art...
The Architecture...
The Saints...
The Catherdals and Churches...
The Music...
Brigitte Bardot, circa 1960...
The Bra....
The Garter....
Vive La France
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