Man held in France over ‘Qaeda links’ released: official

sg.news.yahoo.com

PARIS (AFP) – – The younger of two brothers arrested in France on suspicion of links to the Al-Qaeda militant network was released on Saturday without charge, a judicial official said.

The detention of the elder brother, a 32-year-old engineer at the CERN nuclear research lab, was extended, the source said.

He may be handed over by Monday to authorities in Paris who deal with anti-terrorist matters.

The younger brother, aged 25, was released late Saturday after being held for more than 48 hours. No charges were brought against him, the source said.

The elder brother, who worked at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research on the Franco-Swiss border just outside Geneva, had been planning to commit at least one attack, according to sources close to the case.

CERN has said the man arrested had been working with the high-profile Large Hadron Collider experiment, which aimed to investigate how the Universe formed after the “Big Bang”.

Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said Friday that investigators were trying to establish which targets in “France or elsewhere” the suspect was hoping to strike.

The pair was arrested in Vienne on Thursday, a town on the Rhone river some 100 kilometres (65 miles) southwest of the Alpine lab, by officers from France’s security service acting on a warrant from an anti-terrorist magistrate.

According to officials, the engineer had made contact over the Internet with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a North African offshoot of Osama bin Laden’s loosely organised global Islamist militant movement.

He had expressed a desire to carry out attacks, but had “not got to the stage of carrying out material acts of preparation”, one said.

The two brothers, both French nationals, were transferred early Friday to the Hauts-de-Seine area, just outside Paris. Read full article…

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