this story got lost in the nobel thrash, but seems notable, less for the Collider connection (which is "sensational") and more for the access they seem to have to nuclear facilities elsewhere. [rquoter]Two European Nuclear Scientists Arrested as Al-Qaeda Suspects Posted By Annie Jacobsen On October 13, 2009 @ 12:02 am In . Column2 02, Crime, Europe, Media, Science, World News | 13 Comments Last week I was in Las Vegas attending a banquet honoring retired intelligence officers, many of whom once worked for the CIA. Some of the guests were still active. Others currently work for the Department of Defense. There were four of us from the press. I got to chatting in a three-way conversation with a former U-2 pilot and a current defense contractor who frequents the Pentagon (and therefore asked to remain anonymous). “What’s going to happen if al-Qaeda gets their hands on WMD?” the pilot asked. “They already have,” the defense contractor said. Then he told the story of how, just last January, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had bungled a WMD experiment using bubonic plague. “None of you press wrote about that,” the man said, eyeballing me. I had to correct him because I did write about that story — for Pajamas Media [1]. My article cited two papers, the Sun and the Washington Times; I couldn’t locate any firsthand sources with access to the information. “How do you know that the information was correct?” I asked my fellow banquet guest. “I was at the military briefing,” he said. Then he added that the briefing was not classified and included several members of the press. “Why do you think that story wasn’t more widely reported?” I asked. He said something to the effect of: there are some things the public finds easier to ignore. I had the same reaction when I returned home from my trip on Friday night to read a single-line item on the Counterterrorism Blog [2]: “Switzerland: Terror cops arrest Collider scientist linked with al-Qaeda,” it said. The Collider is the largest nuclear research facility in the world. For at least the next forty-eight hours the story did not appear anywhere in the U.S. press, despite the fact that the arrested nuclear scientist, a 32-year-old Algerian-born French man named Dr. Adlene Hicheur, was being described by France’s Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence as a “very high-level” operative with AQIM. That’s the same group who’d been experimenting with bubonic plague earlier in the year. Adlene Hicheur had attended Stanford University [3], in California, in 1999 and 2002. Looking into the story, I quickly learned that the charges against the “mild-mannered, deeply religious” French Algerian were stunning. Authorities say Dr. Adlene Hicheur and his 25-year-old brother Halim, also a nuclear scientist, had provided al-Qaeda with data on terrorism targets including the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. That facility, located underground on the Swiss-French border, is not your average nuclear facility. It is a 17-mile underground tunnel track where scientists are trying to create anti-matter by smashing atoms together. The results, the scientists hope, will create mini black holes and allow scientists to further explore theories about what happened after the Big Bang created the universe 14 billion years ago. Throw terrorists into that mix and a lot could go wrong. It was at the Collider that Dr. Adlene Hicheur has spent the last six years working as an independent contractor for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). “We can confirm that Adlene Hicheur was a member of the experimental collaboration at CERN,” a spokesman for CERN told the press. Equally alarming and according to the Daily Mail [4], the younger Hicheur brother “carries out research at similar high-security scientific institutions around Europe.” This includes a top-secret nuclear research center in England called the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. French authorities [5] have been watching the brothers for the past 18 months. According to Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux, the decision to arrest the Hicheurs came after email correspondences between at least one of the brothers and known AQIM operatives had been intercepted by French intelligence agents. “According to European intelligence sources, MI5 had been warned that the suspects ‘are outstanding scientists who had been honing their techniques in nuclear fusion across the world,’” says the Daily Mail [4]. Both brothers are internationally known and respected scientists [3] with access to top-secret nuclear facilities throughout Europe. To those who knew the brothers personally, the news came as a blow. “They were held out to young people here as an example of what you could achieve, whatever your background,” a local youth worker from the brothers’ French town of Vienne told an Indian newspaper, the Siasat Daily [3]. “There is a state of shock at what has happened and some anger,” the worker said. Angry or not, this story is not something anyone should find easy to ignore. [/rquoter]
That is notable... and creepy. It's one thing to observe countries like Iran and North Korea having WMD's, but it's entirely a different thing when people hell-bent on killing get them. Nice find. I wish these sorts of stories would be me obvious in today's media.
I just couldn't take seriously an outlet called Pajamas Media, so I found another article published by The Times. I highlighted a couple of things this article has the original article did not. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6871774.ece [rquoter]Hadron Collider physicist Adlene Hicheur charged with terrorism A French physicist with the European atomic research centre near Geneva was charged with terrorism offences by a Paris judge last night after investigators said that he offered to work with the North African branch of al-Qaeda. Adlène Hicheur, 32, who is of Algerian origin, was arrested last week with his younger brother after intelligence agents intercepted his alleged internet contacts with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The physicist, who works at the giant atomic collider at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research), which straddles Swiss and French territory, told the Islamic group that he was interested in committing an attack but had not begun any material preparation, according to police sources. He had acknowledged contacting the militant organisation, they said. The brother was released last weekend without charge. Judge Christophe Teissier, of the anti-terrorist branch, ordered the French internal security service, the DCRI, to open an investigation into the possible offence of “association with criminals in relation with a terrorist enterprise”. Judge Teissier placed the scientist under formal investigation and ordered his detention. The arrest raised the possibility that Islamist militants could be seeking nuclear weapons technology or planning to attack nuclear targets. Dr Hicheur is reported to have worked for the British Government’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in Oxfordshire for about a year in 2005. He was placed under surveillance by French officers last year after US intelligence services intercepted internet messages he allegedly sent to contacts close to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqim). However, his arrest last week has sparked a furious row among France’s anti-terrorist magistrates. Judge Teissier’s critics say that he missed an opportunity to obtain invaluable information about Aqim networks by moving to detain the suspect at an early stage in his investigation. They said that he should have held off and kept the man under surveillance. Brice Hortefeux, the French Interior Minister, is also being criticised for publicising the arrest. Detractors say that the publicity will have driven the suspect’s contacts underground. CERN said that Dr Hicheur, one of 7,000 scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider, did not have access to any of the underground facilities and did not handle anything that would interest terrorists. A spokesman described him as highly qualified: “This fellow has a doctorate in particle physics, so he is clearly an intelligent person,” he said. The scientist also worked as an instructor in experimental physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. “We are pretty shocked and surprised,” said Jerome Grosse, spokesman for the institute. Residents in the suspect’s home town of Vienne, in eastern France, said that his success had made him a role model for young Muslims. “They are good boys,” said one neighbour of the suspect and his brother. “They are from a family of six children and from a very moderate Muslim family which is seen as a model of integration.” The suspect’s brother is reported to have graduated from the University of Paris with a degree in biomechanics. After graduating, he taught at the 500-year-old Collège de France in Paris — one of the country’s most prestigious research institutes. [/rquoter]
yes, as i noted above, the Hadron connection is a bit sensationalist, since no weapons or defense research goes on there. but the other stuff remains disturbing, and the release of the brother doesn't change that.
