An examination of the human microchip (Verichip, Positive ID) being promoted in the media and how it threatens our freedom. Explored are issues of civil liberties, dehumanization, and religious repercussions of the chip.
Cern Project Update: Could radicals be pals?
Good question! What was Al Qaeda's intentions, to rid us of the plant or supervision of the "Black Hole" ?
October 10,2009
Al Qaeda suspect worked at Swiss nuclear lab
French authorities have arrested an engineer working at an international nuclear research laboratory on suspicion of having links with the
Al Qaeda militant network.
Officials connected with the case say the Algerian man worked at the
CERN nuclear laboratory on the border with Switzerland.
Police arrested the man and his brother after following internet exchanges between the two and other people believed to have links to extremist groups.
Computers, USB drives and hard drives were removed from the brothers' home.
It is believed the older man was planning attacks in France.
According to the Figaro newspaper, the arrests could represent an important step in the hunt for Al Qaeda networks.
- BBCUpdate March 29th 2012
By Associated Press, Published: March 30
PARIS — A French state prosecutor on Friday asked a Paris court to sentence an Algerian-born nuclear physicist to six years in prison for his suspected role in plotting terrorism with al-Qaida’s north African wing.
The request came at the end of the two-day trial of Adlene Hicheur, a former researcher at Switzerland’s CERN laboratory for alleged “criminal association with a view to plotting terrorist attacks.”
The three-judge panel has recessed for deliberations before handing down its verdict on May 4. Hicheur, who has been behind bars since he was arrested in October 2009, risks a maximum 10 years in prison.
The 35-year-old scientist and his defenders say he was a victim of allegedly overzealous French anti-terrorism laws and that he explored ideas on jihadist websites — but never took any concrete step toward terrorism.
The case centers on about 35 emails between Hicheur and an alleged contact with Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb named Mustapha Debchi, who tried to convince him to carry out a suicide bombing. Hicheur declined, but in one response suggested striking at the barracks of a battalion of elite Alpine troops in the eastern town Cran-Gevrier.
Hicheur claimed he was on morphine for a herniated disk and going through a personal “zone of turbulence” when he wrote an 2009 email that advocated an attack on the barracks.
Prosecutor Guillaume Portenseigne rejected Hicheur’s claims of a lack of lucidity and characterized the defendant as “a man who had everything going for him ... but just got led astray in a radical jihadist Islam.”
“Adlene Hicheur was a budding terrorist: He only needed that determining meeting to slip” into concrete action, the prosecutor told the court.
Defense lawyer Patrick Baudouin said a conviction would be “an error” and that “From the beginning, everything has been done to demonize him, to make him into ... France’s most dangerous terrorist, potentially susceptible to participate in a bombing.”
That, he argued, “would place on his shoulders something that he is incapable of doing — fortunately.”
Hicheur’s defenders say the context of the trial makes their case difficult because of recent terror attacks in France. Earlier this month, in an apparently unrelated case, police say another young man of Algerian descent killed three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers in the cities of Toulouse and Montauban and claimed ties to al-Qaida. Mohamed Merah, 23, died later in a shootout with police.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/6-year-prison-term-sought-in-french-
trial-of-ex-cern-physicist-accused-of-terror-plot/2012/03/30/gIQAPMerlS_story.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17554653
French Cern scientist goes on trial for 'al-Qaeda plot'
Emails sent by Adlene Hicheur apparently discussed targets
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A nuclear scientist at the Cern laboratory has gone on trial in France accused of plotting terrorist attacks.
Adlene Hicheur has been in custody since his arrest two-and-a-half years ago, after police intercepted his emails to an alleged contact in Al-Qaeda.
Court documents say the emails proposed targets and suggested Mr Hicheur was willing to be part of an active unit.
His lawyers say he only expressed views online and he was never part of a plot.
The French domestic intelligence service, DCRI, looked at 35 emails sent between Hicheur and an alleged contact in al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
He had been under surveillance for 18 months as investigators monitored the account of Algerian Mustapha Debchi, alleged to be a member of AQIM.
Investigators say the emails, in which the men use pseudonyms, discuss possible "military and political targets to punish governments" in Europe and in particular France.
But Mr Hicheur, who was born in Algeria, never said he would actually carry out an attack.
Shadow of Merah shootings
Adlene Hicheur's family have complained his emails were "misinterpreted"
They were sent while Mr Hicheur was at home from his work at the Cern particle accelerator, suffering from a herniated disc. During this illness he is said to have consulted numerous Islamist websites.
His supporters say he was only expressing strong views and was not planning attacks.
At the start of the trial Mr Hicheur criticised the case against him. "I see a lot of confusion and inaccuracies," Agence France-Presse reported.
"It would be too tedious to revisit each of them (but) the assertions about me... are inaccurate, are subject to debate."
His brother, Halim, complained that the emails had been interpreted in a "biased way".
"This dossier was tampered with from the beginning by the DCRI. Some people wanted to raise the spectre of the terrorism threat by the Algerian, Muslim nuclear physicist, etc."
The trial comes a week after French special forces shot dead Mohamed Merah, who killed seven people in Toulouse and Montauban.
Security issues have since dominated the French presidential election campaign, with President Nicolas Sarkozy proposing that anyone regularly visiting extremist websites should be prosecuted. The first round of voting takes place next month.
"The events of Toulouse and Montauban don't appear to create the most favourable conditions for the trial of Adlene Hicheur," said his lawyer Patrick Baudouin.
"We're really going to have to insist that there's no conflation."
Mr Baudouin told journalists that unlike Merah his client had no weapons in his possession, and no history of violence.
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