Arrested physicist had online contact with al-Qaida branch
OCT 12, 2009
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.023749
Physics Today : Adlène Hicheur, a 32-year-old postdoc at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)—who was arrested in Vienne, France, last week—was charged earlier today on the suspicion of terrorism, say French and Swiss newspapers .Hicheur had told investigators over the weekend that he corresponded over the internet with a contact in north Africa’s al-Qaida branch, said French officials to the Guardian .
The exchange vaguely discussed plans for terror attacks, but nothing concrete was planned, the French official said, speaking on condition that his name not be used because the investigation is ongoing.
French counterterrorism and intelligence agencies have been tracking Adlène Hicheur for 18 months by reading his e-mails, says the Independent . They concluded in recent days that he had reached the “intention or desire stage” of preparing to mount an attack and arranged for his arrest.Hicheur had been working at CERN on data analysis for the LHC since 2003. CERN issued a statement saying the following:
[Hicheur] was not a CERN employee and performed his research under a contract with an outside institute. His work did not bring him into contact with anything that could be used for terrorism: CERN is a particle-physics research laboratory whose research addresses fundamental questions about the universe. None of our research has potential for military application, and all our results are published openly in the public domain. CERN is providing the support requested by the French police in this enquiry.
Hicheur had previously worked on the BaBar experiment in the US, and at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, UK. Related News Story Hadron Collider physicist Adlene Hicheur charged with terrorism London Times
© 2009. American Institute of Physics