PARIS, Jan 6: The French justice ministry has decided to block the expulsion to Algeria of a condemned French Al Qaeda member, Brahim Chalabi, whose network, dismantled in 1994, was revealed this weekend to have been financed by Osama bin Laden over a decade ago, the earliest example, said police sources, of his financing of a terrorist network in France.

Justice Minister Dominique Perben, going against the decision of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy who wanted to expel Mr Chalabi immediately back to Algeria, decided it would be best for French authorities to await a decision by the European Court of Human Rights which has just been petitioned by Mr Chalabi’s attorneys.

They said that their client, being married to a French woman and with four children who are all French citizens, should have the right to remain on French soil.

He had just finished a four-year jail term at Chatearoux prison in south central France, for various terrorism-related activities, many of them in collusion with his brother Mohamed Chalabi, who police say was the ringleader of an network that was dismantled in 1994.