French anti-terrorism authorities have arrested two men -- a Moroccan and a German believed to be a top al-Qaeda recruiter -- as part of investigations of the Sept. 11 attacks and a deadly bombing at a Tunisian synagogue, judicial officials said on Thursday.
The officials said they believe the suspects -- Moroccan national Karim Mehdi and Christian Ganczarski of Germany -- each had links to a cell of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network operating in Hamburg, Germany that helped carry out the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mehdi, 34, was taken into custody on Sunday at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, the officials said on condition of anonymity. He had arrived from Germany, and had planned to leave for the island of La Reunion off southeastern Africa.
Under questioning, Mehdi said he was headed to the island to look for tourist sites to attack, along the lines of the October bombing on the Indonesian island of Bali that killed more than 200 people -- mostly foreign tourists, the officials said.
The arrest was the first in France since French anti-terrorism judges opened an investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington just a few weeks after they took place.
Mehdi is also believed to have had direct contacts with Ziad Jarrah, the suspected pilot of the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, officials said.
Mehdi appeared before a judge Thursday and was placed under investigation -- one step short of being officially charged -- for alleged connection with a terrorist enterprise, officials said. He was being held in custody.
Three of the suicide hijackers who seized control of commercial airliners for the Sept. 11 attacks -- including the alleged ringleader, Mohammed Atta -- allegedly had ties to the Hamburg cell.
Ganczarski, 36, was apprehended on Monday, also at the Paris airport. He was to appear before an anti-terrorism judge in the coming days, the officials said.
Ganczarski allegedly had links to an April 2002 suicide bombing of a historic synagogue on Tunisia's tourist island of Djerba which killed 21 people, including 14 German tourists, the officials said.
German authorities allowed Ganczarski -- a suspected accomplice in the Djerba attack previously identified as Christian G. -- to leave the country in December because there was not sufficient evidence to arrest him, German officials said at the time.
French authorities said they believe he was a top recruiter for al-Qaeda in Germany.
Ganczarski was under investigation for suspected membership in a terrorist group after he was traced as the recipient of an intercepted phone call from Nizar Naouar, the leading suspect in the Djerba bombing who is believed to have died in the suicide mission.
Ganczarski was expected to be put under investigation -- one step short of being officially charged -- yesterday or today in connection with the French investigation into the Djerba attack, officials said.
DISASTER: The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded a magnitude 5.7 and tremors reached as far as Kolkata, India, more than 300km away from the epicenter A powerful earthquake struck Bangladesh yesterday outside the crowded capital, Dhaka, killing at least five people and injuring about a hundred, the government said. The magnitude 5.5 quake struck at 10:38am near Narsingdi, Bangladesh, about 33km from Dhaka, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The earthquake sparked fear and chaos with many in the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people at home on their day off. AFP reporters in Dhaka said they saw people weeping in the streets while others appeared shocked. Bangladesh Interim Leader Muhammad Yunus expressed his “deep shock and sorrow over the news of casualties in various districts.” At least five people,
LEFT AND RIGHT: Battling anti-incumbent, anticommunist sentiment, Jeanette Jara had a precarious lead over far-right Jose Antonio Kast as they look to the Dec. 14 run Leftist candidate Jeannette Jara and far-right leader Jose Antonio Kast are to go head-to-head in Chile’s presidential runoff after topping Sunday’s first round of voting in an election dominated by fears of violent crime. With 99 percent of the results counted, Jara, a 51-year-old communist running on behalf of an eight-party coalition, won 26.85 percent, compared with 23.93 percent for Kast, the Servel electoral service said. The election was dominated by deep concern over a surge in murders, kidnappings and extortion widely blamed on foreign crime gangs. Kast, 59, has vowed to build walls, fences and trenches along Chile’s border with Bolivia to
DEATH SENTENCE: The ousted leader said she was willing to attend a fresh trial outside Bangladesh where the ruling would not be a ‘foregone conclusion’ Bangladesh’s fugitive former prime minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday called the guilty verdict and death sentence in her crimes against humanity trial “biased and politically motivated.” Hasina, 78, defied court orders that she return from India to attend her trial about whether she ordered a deadly crackdown against the student-led uprising that ousted her. She was found guilty and sentenced to death earlier yesterday. “The verdicts announced against me have been made by a rigged tribunal established and presided over by an unelected government with no democratic mandate,” Hasina said in a statement issued from hiding in India. “They are biased and politically motivated,” she
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by Kryptos. The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far. Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. Sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging US$50 for each response. Sanborn in August announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4
RSS