Posted on 12/29/2002 8:21:34 PM PST by Salvation
Baggage handler caught
with guns, bombs in car
Algerian, 27, employed at Paris airport where alleged 'shoe bomber' boarded
© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
Security is high at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris after a baggage handler was found to have guns, explosives and detonators hidden in his car.
Reports from France 3 and LCI television indicate the suspect is a 27-year-old Algerian man, who lives in the northern Parisian suburb of Bondy.
The airport, one of Europe's busiest employing 55,000 and handling 100,000 passengers per day, is the same one where Richard Reid of Britain boarded a Miami-bound plane last year, allegedly with explosives stashed in the sole of his shoe.
France 3 said police found an automatic pistol, a machine gun, five cakes of plastic explosives and two detonators in a vehicle belonging to the suspect, who remains in custody pending an inquiry by anti-terrorist police.
A search of the baggage handler's home led to the arrest of four others – his two brothers, his father and a family friend, reported LCI TV.
Under French law, terror suspects can be held for 96 hours before they're either put under formal investigation – a step short of being charged – or released.
The arrests are the latest in a roundup of suspected Islamic militants in and around Paris in recent weeks. The public has grown increasingly nervous since the Interior Ministry said there was no doubt that at least one terrorist attack was being planned for the near-term.
According to Reuters, French police have arrested nine suspected Islamic terrorists since Dec. 16, hoping to crack a network believed to have recruited young Muslims to train with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida operation, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on America.
A raid on a suburban Paris apartment used by some of the suspects unearthed possible bomb-making devices and false identity papers.
Muslim terrorists arrested in Paris over the last two weeks planned to attack Russian interests and particularly wanted to hit Moscow's embassy in Paris, the interior ministry said.
Security has been stepped up in major French cities and airports over the Christmas holiday period, and the FBI said this week that law enforcement officials should remain alert to the possibility of attempts to bring down airliners with explosives concealed in clothing or shoes.
In September of this year, plastic explosives were found hidden on board a Royal Air Maroc plane that landed in the eastern French airport of Metz.
What's ironic is that if this guy had succeeded in whatever he was into and killed hundreds or thousands of people, the French would not invoke the death penalty or extradite him to any country that does. Are they now rethinking this policy. Probably not.
What do you mean I can't bring these on the plane?
Even though the sub-title of that article had the words 'baggage handler'!
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