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Terror investigation picks up pace

A worldwide campaign to track down terrorists was picking up pace yesterday, one day after US officials sought increased powers to combat terror at home.

But even as the massive investigation spread, fresh fears emerged in the US that the terrorists could have been planning to use crop duster aircraft to attack the country with chemical or biological weapons.

French police yesterday detained four suspected Muslim militants in the Paris region on orders of anti-terrorist judges.

The detentions were linked to a Europewide crackdown on Muslim extremists following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the US, that have left an estimated 7,000 people feared dead.

It was not clear whether there was a direct link between the latest arrests and the US attacks, but seven people detained in France in similar raids last week had been under surveillance for their alleged links to bin Laden.

In the US state of Virginia, prosecutors said they had Monday charged a man with fraudulently helping to obtain valid state identity cards for some of the suspected hijackers who executed the US hijack attacks.

The identity cards helped the suspects obtain credit cards and tickets for the four passenger flights they hijacked.

US Attorney General John Ashcroft told a congressional hearing Monday that the FBI and immigration authorities had detained or arrested 352 people, and were seeking to question an additional 392 -- a number far higher than originally acknowledged. None of the detainees has however been charged with a crime related to the Sept. 11 attack, with most held on immigration or other charges.

Investigators are trying to piece together clues left by the terrorists to find trails leading to other potential terrorists -- and to the masterminds of the strikes.

But despite the biggest investigation in US history, none of those picked up in US have been charged with a crime directly related to the terror attacks

"Thus far we cannot connect any of those people that we're looking at to any of those 19 hijackers," an official was quoted as saying by the New York Times yesterday.

Ashcroft also told Congress that the FBI "has confirmed that Mohammed Atta, one of the suspected hijackers, was acquiring knowledge of crop dusting aircraft prior to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11."
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