The French police arrested a former soldier yesterday whose tip-off led them to arrest a Paris airport baggage handler in whose car a cache of guns and explosives was found.
The baggage handler, Abderazak Besseghir, a 27-year-old Frenchman of Algerian origin, was arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport on Saturday after an automatic pistol, a machine pistol, five cakes of plastic explosive, two detonators and a safety fuse were found in his car.
The police also found radical Islamic and pro-Palestinian documents, information about pilots’ uniforms, and a diary containing details of Paris-US flights.
It was at Charles de Gaulle airport that Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber, boarded a Miami-bound plane just before Christmas last year with explosives hidden in his trainers.
Besseghir remains in custody and is due to be taken before an investigating magistrate today, police sources said. They added that a retired soldier identified as Marcel L, who had reported seeing him with a gun in the airport car park, had also been detained yesterday.
”We wanted to check the credibility and the veracity of his statements, in addition to establishing his personality profile,” an official said.
French radio later reported that the witness, as well as three of Besseghir’s relatives and a friend taken into custody on Saturday, were likely to be released during the evening.
Besseghir has no prior criminal record and no known connection with radical Islamist groups. The police believe he was preparing some kind of terrorist attack, but he insists that someone else must have put the arms in his car.
Police sources said they ”doubted” Besseghir’s suggestion that the weapons were part of a plot against him after the death of his wife, Louisa, in a suspicious fire at their home last July.
Her parents were reported to have told the police she was about to leave him because he had become a radical Muslim. – Guardian Unlimited Â