Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Al-Qaida terror plot foiled, say French police: "
The French police are convinced that their country has escaped a planned chemical or biological attack by an Islamist cell linked to al-Qaida.
An interior ministry official said evidence from Islamist militants arrested in the Lyon area last week made it 'very plain' that an attack with the deadly botulism or ricin toxins was being actively prepared.
The eight suspects arrested on Tuesday were mainly relatives of Menad Benchellali, the son of a radical imam in the Lyon suburb of Venisseux, who has been in jail since December 2002, when he was arrested during a police investigation of French Islamists' efforts to send young Muslim volunteers to fight the Russian forces in Chechnya.
The ministry official, who asked not to be named, confirmed a report in Le Monde that the suspects admitted to the police that Mr Benchellali was a chemicals expert who had been trained in poison-making in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and was actively trying to produce a botulism toxin and ricin.
He had tested his chemicals on animals, they said.
Mr Benchellali's arrest was said at the time to have thwarted suicide bomb attacks on Russian targets in Paris, including the embassy.
But Tuesday's arrests have proved a 'goldmine' of further 'unexpected but unsettling' evidence, the official said.
'After last year's arrests we thought we were dealing with a group planning bomb attacks on Russian interests, and possibly supplying false papers, money and lodgings to Chechens,' an investigator said.
'It now seems a cell around the Benchellali family was trying to manufacture chemical and biological weapons for attacks around Europe.'"
The French police are convinced that their country has escaped a planned chemical or biological attack by an Islamist cell linked to al-Qaida.
An interior ministry official said evidence from Islamist militants arrested in the Lyon area last week made it 'very plain' that an attack with the deadly botulism or ricin toxins was being actively prepared.
The eight suspects arrested on Tuesday were mainly relatives of Menad Benchellali, the son of a radical imam in the Lyon suburb of Venisseux, who has been in jail since December 2002, when he was arrested during a police investigation of French Islamists' efforts to send young Muslim volunteers to fight the Russian forces in Chechnya.
The ministry official, who asked not to be named, confirmed a report in Le Monde that the suspects admitted to the police that Mr Benchellali was a chemicals expert who had been trained in poison-making in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and was actively trying to produce a botulism toxin and ricin.
He had tested his chemicals on animals, they said.
Mr Benchellali's arrest was said at the time to have thwarted suicide bomb attacks on Russian targets in Paris, including the embassy.
But Tuesday's arrests have proved a 'goldmine' of further 'unexpected but unsettling' evidence, the official said.
'After last year's arrests we thought we were dealing with a group planning bomb attacks on Russian interests, and possibly supplying false papers, money and lodgings to Chechens,' an investigator said.
'It now seems a cell around the Benchellali family was trying to manufacture chemical and biological weapons for attacks around Europe.'"
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