Marine
01-02-2003, 6:54pm
Police in Paris are questioning an airport baggage handler for a third day, baffled by what he was doing with a bomb and automatic weapons in his car.
Abderazak Besseghir has refused to answer nearly all questions put to him, except to claim that he is the victim of a set-up, possibly by a member of his family seeking revenge against him.
He was arrested on Saturday night as he returned to his car at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport.
The alarm had been raised earlier by a former soldier who reported seeing a weapon.
In the vehicle, police found five cakes of plastic explosives, two detonators, a fuse, a machine gun and an automatic pistol.
Investigators said the bomb components were ready to use.
But they remain puzzled as to exactly what they might have been used for.
"He certainly wasn't going mushroom picking," one investigator has said.
Mr Besseghir, a 27-year-old Frenchman of Algerian origin, is not known to have any links to extremist groups, although correspondents say the possibility of a terrorist connection with Islamic militants will be closely examined.
If some kind of terror attack was being planned, police will want to establish whether it was a hijacking or an assault on the airport itself.
Cache
The other line of inquiry will be whether there was a purely criminal motive behind the weapons and explosives cache.
The firm which employed Mr Besseghir said he had worked at the airport for three years without giving any grounds for suspicion. He had no criminal record.
Like other baggage handlers, he had security clearance for a number of restricted zones at the airport.
It was from Charles de Gaulle last year that shoe-bomber Richard Reid - a self-declared follower of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden - left on a flight to Miami which he later tried to blow up.
Mr Besseghir's father, two brothers and a family friend have also been taken in for questioning, and his home in the northern Parisian suburb of Bondy has been searched.
But there have been no reports of significant new information from any quarter since Mr Besseghir's arrest.
Mr Besseghir can be held for up to four days without charge.
Series of arrests
Paris police have made several arrests in the past two weeks of suspected Islamic militants. The authorities say some were planning an attack on the Russian embassy in the city.
Police said before Christmas that they had found bomb-making equipment during raids in the Paris suburbs.
In total, nine arrests have been made since 16 December.
All those arrested are said to be of Algerian or Moroccan origin.
The arrests stem from an investigation into possible connections between Islamic militants in Europe and Chechnya.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2617107.stm
Abderazak Besseghir has refused to answer nearly all questions put to him, except to claim that he is the victim of a set-up, possibly by a member of his family seeking revenge against him.
He was arrested on Saturday night as he returned to his car at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport.
The alarm had been raised earlier by a former soldier who reported seeing a weapon.
In the vehicle, police found five cakes of plastic explosives, two detonators, a fuse, a machine gun and an automatic pistol.
Investigators said the bomb components were ready to use.
But they remain puzzled as to exactly what they might have been used for.
"He certainly wasn't going mushroom picking," one investigator has said.
Mr Besseghir, a 27-year-old Frenchman of Algerian origin, is not known to have any links to extremist groups, although correspondents say the possibility of a terrorist connection with Islamic militants will be closely examined.
If some kind of terror attack was being planned, police will want to establish whether it was a hijacking or an assault on the airport itself.
Cache
The other line of inquiry will be whether there was a purely criminal motive behind the weapons and explosives cache.
The firm which employed Mr Besseghir said he had worked at the airport for three years without giving any grounds for suspicion. He had no criminal record.
Like other baggage handlers, he had security clearance for a number of restricted zones at the airport.
It was from Charles de Gaulle last year that shoe-bomber Richard Reid - a self-declared follower of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden - left on a flight to Miami which he later tried to blow up.
Mr Besseghir's father, two brothers and a family friend have also been taken in for questioning, and his home in the northern Parisian suburb of Bondy has been searched.
But there have been no reports of significant new information from any quarter since Mr Besseghir's arrest.
Mr Besseghir can be held for up to four days without charge.
Series of arrests
Paris police have made several arrests in the past two weeks of suspected Islamic militants. The authorities say some were planning an attack on the Russian embassy in the city.
Police said before Christmas that they had found bomb-making equipment during raids in the Paris suburbs.
In total, nine arrests have been made since 16 December.
All those arrested are said to be of Algerian or Moroccan origin.
The arrests stem from an investigation into possible connections between Islamic militants in Europe and Chechnya.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2617107.stm