Posted on 11/19/2003 10:32:44 AM PST by ds03
PARIS, Nov 19, 2003 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Counter-terrorism agents this week arrested a man suspected of links to the assassins of anti-Taliban military commander Ahmed Shah Massood, France's interior minister said Wednesday.
The suspect, not identified by name, was arrested Monday, Nicolas Sarkozy told lawmakers during a question and answer session.
Sarkozy said the suspect "was in liaison with the assassins of Commander Massood," the western-backed head of the northern alliance opposed to the Taliban.
Massood was slain on Sept. 9, 2001 in northern Afghanistan, two days before the terror attacks in the United States, by two men posing as journalists.
Judicial officials said the suspect, in his 30s, was being held for questioning by France's counterintelligence agency, the DST. Under France's anti-terrorism laws, a suspect can be held for up to four days before being freed or placed under investigation.
The judicial officials, asking not to be further identified, said the suspect was allegedly close to a group of people who carried out training exercises in the late 1990s in the Fontainebleau forest south of Paris.
It was not immediately known whether the suspect had any direct ties to a French man extradited from Australia on Oct.17, Willie Virgile Brigitte, who is suspected of running false passports to Massood's assassins.
Brigitte, 35, had organized survival training lessons in Fontainebleau, according to judicial officials.
Brigitte, originally from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, had spent months in al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Brigitte's arrest may have disrupted a terror cell in Australia, officials there have said.
In October, police said that the video camera stuffed with explosives that killed Massood had been stolen from a French journalist in the Grenoble region.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press, All rights reserved
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