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Posted on 11/02/2006 11:53:09 PM PST by MadIvan
UP TO a dozen workers at Paris Charles de Gaulle have access to the most sensitive areas of the airport, despite being suspected of links to Islamic terrorism, it emerged yesterday.
More than 70 Muslim workers at France's main airport have been stripped of their security clearance, after an investigation claimed staff had visited terrorists' training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
But a number have kept their passes because, under French law, they must be allowed an opportunity to respond to charges before they are suspended.
Some are still cleaning planes and handling baggage for flights to the United States at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle Airport, a government official said. More than 100 staff were under surveillance for months after a security review earlier this year.
Investigators found that one employee was believed to be a friend of Richard Reid, the British shoe-bomber now serving a life sentence in Colorado, while another is believed to be close to a senior figure in an Algerian terrorist group with links to al-Qaeda.
One French baggage-handler allegedly spent three years in Yemen and attended a military training camp run by Islamic militants.
Ten workers who were stripped of security clearance - nine baggage-handlers of North African descent and a French security guard who converted to Islam and is married to a Moroccan woman - are suing the airport authorities on the grounds that they have been discriminated against because of their religion.
At least six are due to appear before a Paris court next Friday. All ten are practising Muslims who have worked at the airport for between three and nine years.
Lawyers for the ten say "they were asked how often they go to the mosque, whether they had been to Mecca and whether they know any iman".
One lawyer said: "We've not seen any objective evidence The only common denominator we see is they are all Muslims."
Police admit the "principle of precaution" was used to decide which staff should be stripped of their security badges, and said it did not mean they had committed an offence or were potential terrorists. However, a senior government representative said he considered they represented "a significant danger".
Nicolas Sarkozy, the hardline interior minister, said: "I cannot accept that people with radical beliefs work in an airport. I prefer risking industrial action because we have been too strict than finding ourselves hit by tragedy because we have not been strict enough."
The 72 suspended employees worked as security guards, baggage-handlers, cleaners, ground staff, or delivery personnel. They worked for at least eight companies at the airport, including: ACNA, an aircraft-cleaning firm owned by Air France; Federal Express; Connecting Bag Services, a subsidiary of a US cargo-handling company; and Chronopost, a delivery firm owned by the French post office.
The recent sanctions appear to lend credence to controversial claims made by a far-right politician this year. In his book, The Mosques of Roissy, Philippe de Villiers, head of the Movement for France, wrote that the airport had become a hotbed of radical Islamic thought after being infiltrated by militants.
The claims provoked furore among opposition socialists and Muslims, who labelled him an Islamophobe and poured scorn on his allegations.
Mr de Villiers, whose movement rallies Catholic and nationalistic tendencies, railed against radical Islam in the book, alleging that militants were working in secure luggage and passenger transit areas.
Some luggage-handling firms contracted by the facility employ "predominantly Muslims and are organised on ethnic and religious criteria under a Mafia-like system", he wrote.
"The presence of Islamic radicals is not marginal; it's real, deeply rooted and dangerous," he said. Police closed down 29 makeshift prayer rooms at the airport upon publication of Mr de Villiers' book, which made the French bestseller list.
At the time, Dahlil Boubakeur, the head of the French Council of the Muslim Faith and rector of the Paris Mosque, described Mr de Villiers' allegations as an "outrageous caricature of Islam", and demanded they be investigated.
France's police intelligence and surveillance service, the Renseignements Généraux, cast doubt on at least one document Mr de Villiers claimed it had produced to support his allegations and which he reproduced in his book, while Sud Aerien, an employees' union at Roissy, dismissed the far-right leader's claims as "a political stunt".
However, Mr de Villiers told Le Figaro yesterday: "When I revealed the existence of clandestine mosques and networks of Islamic baggage-handlers at Roissy in my book, numerous media and almost every politician refused to believe me. Six months later, what do we see? Events have proved me right."
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
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Glad they are taking action now, BUT, you know if only they saw this radical Islam thing happening back in the 70’s it wouldn’t have gotten this bad.
The cold war era giving way to something even more attractive to the believer and harder to defeat and neutralize i.e. radical Islam. Carter, Khomeini in FRANCE, Mujahedeen in Afghanistan and Wahhabism, OBL, Taliban and AQ? Almost 3 decades later, we are just getting wise!
Kind of makes you wonder how many terror suspects are working in other airports around the world.
At some some of the French "youths" managed to find jobs.
BUMP
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