Airport Alerts as Terror Fears Continue

December 26, 2003

Airport Alerts as Terror Fears Continue 
The Scotsman, UK

INTERNATIONAL airports remained on alert last night following a string of 
security scares amid fears al-Qaeda was planning a massive terror attack over 
the Christmas period. 

Air France cancelled flights between Paris and Los Angeles after a warning from 
the United States that people with links to the terror organisation were on 
passenger lists. 

In a separate alert, one terminal at New York’s LaGuardia Airport was closed 
because of a security breach. 

Meanwhile, police in London placed a ban on heavy lorries driving past the US 
Embassy in a move to tighten security. 

The Air France flights to Los Angeles were cancelled after US intelligence 
found the name of at least one person with suspected links to terror groups on 
passenger lists. 

As an extra precaution, the US department of homeland security said extra 
sensors had been deployed to monitor the air for deadly microbes that could be 
used in an attack. 

US officials relayed "credible, reliable" intelligence reports to France that 
extremist groups were planning "near-term simultaneous attacks that would rival 
September 11", a US official said. 

Air France said it cancelled six departing and returning flights on Christmas 
Eve and Christmas Day at the request of the French prime minister, Jean-Pierre 
Raffarin. 

A spokeswoman at Mr Raffarin’s office said no formal inquiry was under way 
and no arrests had been made. 

"We have not detected passengers with the profile of people belonging to a 
radical Islamic group," a source close to French investigating judges that deal 
with terrorism said. 

"All the checks so far have come to nothing," he said. 

France’s DST counter-intelligence service questioned a number of people, but 
found no evidence of members of radical Islamist groups among them. 

The only person named by US intelligence as a suspect, a Tunisian man with a 
pilot’s licence, was still in Tunisia and had no apparent plans to leave the 
country, the source said. 

The head of the International Terrorism Observatory in Paris, Roland Jacquard, 
said the flights were cancelled as a precaution. 

"There were people who were felt to pose a risk, in terms of being possible 
al-Qaeda supporters, because of the countries they had visited. Because of the 
end-year security alert, the US authorities didn’t want to take any risks," 
Mr Jacquard said. 

In an indication of the high level of concern at airports across the world 
following a warning this week from the US that militants might be planning 
terror attacks over the festive period, the Delta Air Lines terminal at New 
York’s LaGuardia Airport was closed for about 90 minutes on Wednesday after 

a woman passenger set off a metal detector in the terminal. 

The passenger continued into the terminal before she could receive a secondary 
screening with a hand wand, said a Transportation Security Administration 
spokeswoman, Amy Von Walter. 

"We were not able to locate her, which is why the entire concourse was 
evacuated. 

"Airport police swept the concourse and, as a precautionary measure, every 
single passenger from that terminal is being rescreened." 

Scotland Yard said yesterday it had boosted security around the US Embassy in 
London by banning large lorries from driving past it. 

Police insisted the extra security measure was a precaution and not a response 
to a specific terrorist threat. 

Police banned lorries more than 7ft wide from entering Upper Grosvenor Street 
and Upper Brook Street, which lead to the central London embassy, from 
Christmas Eve. It was not clear how long the measure would remain in place.
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