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AWOL passenger not terrorist: French police
EFL:
French investigations have found no evidence that a ticket-holder who did not show up for a trans-Atlantic flight might be an Afghan-trained Al Qaeda sympathizer armed with a bomb, police said today.
| "Non non! Certainement not!" |
U.S. television network ABC said this week that European authorities were searching for a man with alleged Al Qaeda links who failed to board a Paris-to-Los Angeles flight on Christmas Eve â one of six Air France flights cancelled amid security fears. A ticketed passenger surnamed Hai on a cancelled Christmas Eve flight attracted attention because an Afghan with a similar name figures on a U.S. terror watch list, French officials said.
| Ummm... I knew several thousand Vietnamese named that, too. Sa-a-a-ay! You don't suppose it was them? |
But a senior French police official said that surname alone was not sufficient for them to track the person down and that there was no indications that the passenger posed a threat. "We have no new information from American (intelligence) services that lends credibility to the idea that this person represented a specific threat to the Dec. 24 flight," he said.
| "Would you like some of this cheese? It's really quite tasty, despite its odor..." |
French Justice Minister Dominique Perben had said Wednesday that authorities are seeking a passenger who did not turn up because "whatâs important when someone doesnât take a plane is to know why he didnât take it."
Well, he seems to have a clue.
But police said no active search is underway. "We have just a name, no first name, no birth date, no passport number," said the senior police official. "We canât do serious work on such foundations."
So they arenât looking, there is no investigation, and they continue to demonstrate why we shouldnât trust them.
Posted by: Steve 2004-01-08 |
