Italian police: 2 in jail are al-Qaida suspects

ROME — Two French citizens jailed since last year on suspicion of smuggling migrants were al-Qaida propaganda point men in Europe and were heard talking about a possible attack on a Paris airport, Italian anti-terrorism investigators said Tuesday. But police stressed that investigators found no concrete plan of attack.

Italian police said Bassam Ayachi, 62, and Raphael Frederic Gendron, 33, were served warrants in jail on Tuesday accusing them of criminal association for international terrorism.

Prosecutor Roberto Rossi in Bari, where the pair have been jailed since November, said the two spoke explicitly in intercepted phone conversations about an attack in France, and that Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris was mentioned.

“These two are top-level point men on the ideological level” for propaganda for al-Qaida in Europe, Italian anti-terrorism police official Claudio Galzerano said in a telephone interview.

A French judicial official said Tuesday that an investigation into a French and Belgian recruitment ring for Afghanistan turned up Ayachi’s and Gendron’s names. Evidence linked to the two men has been given to Italian authorities, the French official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with French judicial regulations.

French Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie briefed Parliament about the arrests Tuesday, saying the two were “known in connection with propaganda and recruitment operations, as well as for belonging to networks.” She said, “We don’t have any evidence to seriously suggest a threat against Roissy,” as Charles de Gaulle Airport is known.

The ANSA news agency said other alleged planning involved unspecified targets in Britain. Quoting from excerpts of transcripts of the intercepted jail conversations, it said the two spoke of “a need to strike at the English.”

It quoted Ayachi as referring to a plane, saying, “You don’t need me to tell you what it means to have a French plane” and saying in other references “we’ll kill by striking.”

Galzerano said investigations have indicated that the risk of such an attack by these two men inconsequential.

The initial concern over possible planning for terrorist attacks was based on excerpts of intercepted telephone conversation, and fragmentary phrases, said Galzerano, from the national UCIGOS anti-terrorism police squad.

But nothing has been found to back up any concrete plan of an attack, he told The AP.

Police said the conversations revealed that the men had been planning to go to Afghanistan.

Both were Brussels residents, and Ayachi was the religious authority at an Islamic center there, police said.

Police said Ayachi was the uncle of a Tunisian extremist convicted in 1999 of supporting terrorist organizations. The Tunisian is believed to have died in a suicide attack against U.S.-allied forces, police said without giving details of the attack.

The men have been held in Bari since November when they were arrested on suspicion of smuggling two Syrians and three Palestinians into Italy aboard a camping trailer, police said.