Thursday September 13 3:23 PM EST
FBI Ignored French Warning on Extremist-Radio
PARIS (Reuters) - The FBI arrested an Islamic militant in Boston last month and received French intelligence reports linking him to Osama bin Laden but apparently did not act on them, a French radio station said Thursday.
Europe 1 radio reported that U.S. police had arrested a man with dual French and Algerian nationality who had several passports, technical information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals. The man had been taking flying lessons, it added.
Asked for information by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, French security services provided a dossier clearly identifying him as an Islamic militant working with Saudi-born guerrilla leader bin Laden.
"He has a pedigree as long as your arm, an investigator said," the radio reported. "He belongs to the Pakistani-Afghan network that trains Osama bin Laden's soldiers."
French officials could not confirm the full content of the Europe 1 report but a judicial source said the United States had now requested information on the militant.
The source added that French authorities had opened a preliminary investigation to establish whether the terror attacks in the United States merited judicial moves in France. The source could give no further details.
Bin Laden, who is Afghan-based, is the suspected mastermind behind Tuesday's devastating plane attacks on New York and Washington. Two of the four commercial airliners hijacked in the suicide operation took off from Boston.
Many Algerian militants fought against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s and have since mounted guerrilla attacks in Algeria, France and other countries, intelligence sources say.
The radio said the man, who is in jail but has refused to cooperate with investigators, was a "soldier without borders" who had made several trips to potential hotspots around the world in recent months.
"He has the profile of someone who could prepare or lead terrorist operations," it said.
"This information was transmitted by French security services to the FBI but apparently got lost in the enormous American police machinery," it added.
"The inquiry that might have been able to avoid everything was not started. There was no special alert transmitted to airport authorities in the U.S.," it concluded.