PARIS, Oct 16: The French secret services revealed on Thursday that the camera used on Sept 9, 2001, in Afghanistan by two Tunisian men to kill guerilla leader Ahmed Shah Masood had been stolen in Dec 2000 in the French city of Grenoble from a photo-journalist, Jean-Pierre Vincendet, who was then shooting a story on the city’s Christmas store window displays.

Mr Vincendet says that while shooting his report, he was attacked by five men who took his camera, which he immediately reported to the police. “A few days ago,” he said, “I got a call from the FBI in Washington to ask me whether in fact I still had my camera on hand, and when I noted that it had been declared stolen to Grenoble police in Dec 2000, they advised me that by tracing the serial number that appeared in the camera used to kill Masood, they’d been able to determine that I’d been the previous owner.”

He says that the FBI and the French secret service were now in the process of attempting to trace the route that the camera took between the time it was taken from him and made its way nine months later, into the hands of the two “false journalists”.