Cancelled Air France Flights: American Mistake About Suspects Identity Confirmed

Le Monde (Paris) January 2, 2004
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3210,36-347851,0.html

Three days before Christmas, the federal American police (FBI) gave French 
police a list of six names and information according to which terrorists 
linked to al Qaeda were planning to hijack an Air France aircraft in order to 
crash it on American soil. The French government, after 48 hours of 
discussion, decided to cancel the flights.

On Friday, Jan. 2, an FBI official asking not to be identified confirmed that 
the FBI had been mistaken about the identity of the passengers on the Air 
France flights suspected of presenting a terrorist threat, which led to the 
cancellation of six Christmas flights between Paris and Los Angeles.

The official, interviewed by Agence France-Presse, confirmed an article in 
Friday's Wall Street Journal, which, quoting French sources, revealed that the 
six names appearing on the list of potential terrorists transmitted by the FBI 
to the French police had proved to be on verification those of innocent 
passengers. "It's true, that's what happened," he said, adding that he knew 
the French sources. The official explained that "the American intelligence 
agencies obtained these names in the course of their investigations, but they 
were not able, as is often the case, to verify for themselves whether their 
suspicions were justified."

"Too often people think that we have a complete biography of potentially 
suspect individuals, but that's often not the case," he continued, explaining 
that there is usually no way to know whether a person is really suspicious 
short of face-to-face interrogation. Thus, "this is not a case of mistaken 
identity but of a conclusion drawn from intelligence agencies' information 
gathering," the FBI official further explained. "People can sometimes have 
their name mentioned in an accusation, but that doesn't necessarily mean that 
they're guilty."

'NO CHOICE BUT TO ACT'

However, when "we get the name of a person who may be implicated in a 
terrorist threat, there's no choice but to act," the official insisted, 
adding: "I think that no one [in the US or in France] would want to take even 
the slightest risk." The French government, after forty-eight hours of 
discussions with American authorities, decided to cancel six flights between 
Paris and Los Angeles on Wednesday, Dec. 24, and Thursday, Dec. 25. The 
investigators interrogated the six persons whose names appeared on the FBI's 
list and who had booked flights from Paris to Los Angeles. These individuals 
proved to be a child whose name was supposed to be that of the director of a 
terrorist group based in Tunisia, a Welsh insurance agent, an elderly Chinese 
woman who once ran a Paris restaurant, and three French citizens.

French authorities had announced earlier that investigators were unable to 
confirm American suspicions, and air traffic returned to normal on Friday, 
Dec. 26.

--With AFP

DISTURBANCES IN AIR TRAFFIC

In a sign of high anxiety, two Air France airliners landed with an escort of 
two American F-16 fighter-bombers on Tuesday and Wednesday in Los Angeles, the 
Washington Post revealed Thursday. This information was indirectly confirmed 
on Friday by the French transportation secretary, Dominique Bussereau. "At 
present, both nations' air bases are in a heightened state of alert, and it is 
possible that civil aircraft may be followed closely by military aircraft," 
said Mr. Bussereau. "This has already occurred in the United States."

In London on Friday, British Airways too was forced to cancel, at the order of 
the British government and for the second consecutive day, one of its three 
daily flights for Washington, for reasons of security. British Airways flight 
223 was cancelled on Thursday several hours before departure, on the advice of 
American authorities. This is the first time since the attacks of September 
11, 2001, that BA has cancelled even one flight to the United States, much 
less two in two days.

In Mexico, an Aeromexico flight linking Mexico City and Los Angeles was 
cancelled on Thursday for the second time in two days, at the request of 
American authorities, who have decided to require foreign carriers flying to 
or over the United States to carry armed air marshals when they deem this 
necessary. (AFT, Reuters)
--
Translated by Mark K. Jensen
Web page: http://www.plu.edu/~jensenmk/
E-mail: jensenmk@plu.edu