French police seized a protective chemical suit in a Monday raid that officials said may have prevented a holiday chemical attack on Paris (see GSN, Dec. 17).

The arrested three men and a woman and searched an apartment and a basement storage unit in the heavily Muslim suburb of La Courneuve, outside Paris, the Los Angeles Times reported today.

Authorities discovered “two 13-kilo (29-pound) containers, empty, two vials of liquid that is now under analysis, and a military suit for nuclear, bacteriological and chemical protection,” French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said (Sebastian Rotella, Los Angeles Times, Dec. 18).  The vials have been taken to Le Bouchet military laboratory in the Essonne region south of Paris.

One of the vials was labeled and the results of analyses to determine whether the contents correspond to the label were expected today.  Interior Ministry experts cited by Liberation said the labeled product is generally used for engraving electronic circuits — some of which were found in the La Courneuve apartment — but that it can be used as part of an explosive mixture.  Making a bomb from the material is impractical, according to Liberation sources, because the chemical would explode immediately when mixed with the other necessary ingredients. 

Officials identified one of the men arrested, 29-year-old Mirwani ben Ahmed, as a suspect in an attempt to bomb Strasbourg Cathedral in 2000.  Ben Ahmed and one of the other men arrested yesterday are said to be Algerian, as is the woman, who Liberation reported is Ben Ahmed’s wife.  The other man is reportedly Moroccan.

Ben Ahmed has also been questioned in an investigation into Chechen terrorism that French authorities opened last month, and French intelligence believes that, while in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, he studied theology, soldiering and bomb-making.  One investigator cited by Liberation said the suspect has lived successively in Afghanistan, Germany, France, Georgia, Chechnya and England (Patricia Tourancheau, Liberation, Dec. 18, GSN translation).

The suspects are also linked to Rabah Kadre, who was arrested for planning a chemical attack in London, Sarkozy said.

“With these four (suspects) here, it was better to arrest them before rather than after,” Sarkozy said.  “When you find people with this kind of material, there is not doubt that arresting them was the right move,” he added (Rotella, Los Angeles Times).

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