June 14, 2002	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 2, 1423

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PARIS, June 13: The French police say they’ve arrested five men — two of them apparently Pakistani nationals — in an early-morning raid staged on Wednesday (June 12) in two suburbs of Paris.

Some of the men, notably the two Pakistanis, are suspected of having links with Markas Dawa al-Irshab and other terrorist organizations operating in Kashmir.

All five are believed to be linked to Al Qaeda and are being accused of having provided logistical support to Richard Reid, the British “shoe-bomber” who on Dec 22 unsuccessfully attempted to blow up a bomb contained in his shoe during an American Airlines flight to Miami that he had boarded at Roissy- Charles de Gaulle Airport outside of Paris. Two of the men, who were rounded up by the anti-terrorist section of the Brigade criminelle de Paris, are said to be holders of Pakistani passports. For the moment, they have not been identified.

The two men were arrested from a discrete residence they maintained in a back alley in the suburb of Evry, located south of Paris. The other three men were picked up from Mantes-la- Jolie, a poor urban neighbourhood west of Paris, which in the past has been an important centre of Islamic fundamentalists. All three men, say the sources, are French nationals of North African origin. The police say they seized guns and rifles, a telescopic lens and two computers.

Also, say the sources, they were able to bring back an “abundance” of literature which, they say, undertook the promotion of what they refer to as “Islamic radicalism.” Some of the texts, say police, appeared “mysterious,” with some of them providing “curious analyses of the Quran.”

The five men were picked up upon the orders of Judge Jean- Louis Bruguiere, the country’s highest-ranking magistrate in charge of anti-terrorist affairs.

With the reelection of President Chirac to a new five-year term on May 5, and the probable arrival after legislative elections next Sunday of a solid Rightwing majority, such raids are to be stepped up, with France’s anti-terrorist programme expected to receive additional funding and support, making it possible for Judge Bruguiere and the country’s other major anti-terrorist magistrate Jean-Paul Ricard, to better “coordinate” their activities with those of other countries, notably the United States and United Kingdom.

Already, for yesterday’s two raids, French police received the support of the Brigade de recherche et d’intervention, whose usual stock-in-trade are local mafia crime gangs and armed robbers who tend to specialize in armoured transport vehicles.

Until now, the police sent to arrest alleged “terrorists” have had the tendency to be more savvy about the “politics” of Islamic fundamentalism rather than the criminal side of their activities.

The police sources say they hope that the new French legislature, which is expected to be largely supportive of the new anti-terrorism measures, slated to be proposed by President Chirac, will make their task somewhat easier, for example, by allowing them, in cases of terrorism, to hold suspects for longer than the 96 hours (four days) allowed.

One police source noted that as for the seven Pakistani citizens who were rounded up during a similar early morning raid in Paris and its suburbs last April, six of them had to be released before police were able to “appropriately” interrogate them or check into their alibis, while the seventh suspected terrorist - all of them were alleged to belong to Markas Dawa al- Irshab - was expelled back to Pakistan.

This time around, say the sources, the five terrorists, and notably the two Pakistani suspects, could very well have information with regard to “growing suspicions” within the ranks of the French anti-terrorist forces according to which many of the alleged local Al Qaeda members could very well have links to terrorist organizations that operate in Kashmir.