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Air France groundings stemmed from mistakes
Wow, another slamdunk for Homeland Security.
--- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ty_aviation_dc PARIS, Jan 2 (Reuters) - Air France's grounding of three transatlantic flights over Christmas was a mistake, based on FBI information that in one case confused a child's name with a suspected terrorist, the Wall Street Journal Europe said Friday. Citing French officials, the newspaper said the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation gave French police on December 22 a list of six suspects' names and information indicating militants linked to al Qaeda were planning to hijack an Air France jet. French officials said that when French agents detained the passengers on the Paris-Los Angeles flights with names matching those on the list, Air France found the name matching that of the head of a Tunisian-based terror group was a child. Another "terrorist" was a Welsh insurance agent while a third was an elderly Chinese woman who once ran a restaurant in Paris, the newspaper said. The other three on the list were French citizens. A spokeswoman at the French Interior Ministry said: "Some names were checked and they did not correspond to the people." However, a source close to French investigating judges handling terror cases told Reuters the newspaper report could not be true, because U.S. terrorism investigators had never given French authorities passenger names, only flight numbers. French officials cited in the newspaper said questioning in front of U.S. transport officials revealed no sinister plots. On December 24, Air France cancelled six flights between Paris and Los Angeles on December 24 and 25 at the request of the French government, which had received information from the United States of a "credible threat" to the carrier. The U.S. government raised its security alert to the second highest level, code orange, before Christmas, and imposed temporary flight restrictions over New Year over New York, Las Vegas and other U.S. cities that might be terror targets. U.S. and French officials on Thursday and Friday confirmed that U.S. F-16 fighter jets were escorting some Air France flights over U.S. air space over the New Year period for fear attackers might try to crash them into American targets. "There is no specific threat (against France) but simply the awareness of a terrorist threat which exists globally and can strike at any time," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous told reporters on Friday. |
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Air France groundings stemmed from mistakes
Like terrorists would get on a watch list, then fly under their own names.
Duh. How could they not have given them the names? They didn't question everybody on the plane for hours and hours, just the people they were suspected. Of course they had the names, or they couldn't question and release them. "James Anatidae" wrote in message ... Wow, another slamdunk for Homeland Security. However, a source close to French investigating judges handling terror cases told Reuters the newspaper report could not be true, because U.S. terrorism investigators had never given French authorities passenger names, only flight numbers. |
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