Paris pizza jihad

Two pizzeria workers have been arrested in Paris. From AP:

Anti-terrorism judges placed two Paris pizzeria workers under investigation Friday in a probe into radical Islamic training camps set up in France during the 1990s, judicial officials said.

Mustapha Boussaffa of Tunisia and Hazdine Sayeh, a French-Algerian, were being investigated for "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise," the officials said on condition of anonymity. In France, being placed under investigation is one step short of formal charges.

Boussaffa ran a pizzeria that is believed to have become a meeting place for radical Muslims and Sayeh worked there, the officials said.

The men, who are both about 30, were taken into custody Tuesday in the Paris region during the investigation into a network of Islamic radicals that once ran training camps for new recruits, the officials said. One camp was set up in the late 1990s in the Fontainebleau forest south of Paris.

The men are believed to have played only marginal roles in the case, the officials said.

The wider probe focuses on the death of anti-Taliban military commander Ahmed Shah Massood in Afghanistan. The anti-terrorism judges are looking into an alleged support network for Massood's killers.

Massood was slain Sept. 9, 2001, in northern Afghanistan, two days before the terror attacks in the United States, by two men posing as journalists.

Willie Virgile Brigitte, a French man extradited from Australia in October, is believed to be at the heart of the case. He is suspected of running false passports to Massood's assassins.

Brigitte organized the survival training lessons in Fontainebleau and spent months in al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to French judicial officials.

Posted by Robert at February 27, 2004 5:01 PM
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