bloggie

At Roissy, 70 Muslims lose security clearances

Charles De Gaulle/Roissy airport hires many of its people from Paris's northern, Muslim cités. An investigative book decried this policy of hiring from among the wolves to protect the chicken coop, calling it an easy target for Islamic infiltration. Now, in an anti-terror investigation ordered by Sarkozy (in addition to shutting down the "unofficial prayer rooms" in the airport), 70 of the airport's Muslim employees have turned up as having associations with or sympathies to known terrorists, including a friend of shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Hey, I have an idea: let's hire drug addicts to staff our pharmacies, arsonists as forest rangers, and paroled child molesters to teach gym class. It makes as much sense as hiring devout Muslims for airport security jobs.

Seventy two employees of Paris's main airport have lost their security clearance after an anti-terrorism investigation that they posed a security risk.

Trade unions at Charles de Gaulle airport are threatening to go on strike over the issue, which they say amounts to religious discrimination. They claim the workers were targeted because they are Muslims.

The employees - mainly aircraft cleaners or baggage handlers - are suspected by France's anti-terrorism co-ordination unit, Uclat, of having links with radical Islam, or of attending terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

According to Uclat, one was a friend of Richard Reid, the British "shoe bomber" who tried to blow up a flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001 and is serving a life sentence in the United States.

Jacques Lebrot, the deputy prefect of the Seine-Saint Denis département in which the airport is located, said all but two of the workers who lost their accreditation were Muslims. Charles de Gaulle airport draws many of its employees from the surrounding, troubled northern suburbs of Paris, where much of the population is of north African origin.