Vienne, October 11: The scientist suspected of plotting terrorist attacks on nuclear sites in France is a brilliant, internationally known physicist who has worked on research projects in Britain and the US, it emerged yesterday.
Adlène Hicheur, 32, who currently works on the "Big Bang" Large Hadron Collider experiment on the Swiss-French border, was once a research fellow at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Chilton, Oxfordshire. His name is attached to dozens of research papers presented at universities and nuclear research centres all over the world.
Mr Hicheur, and his brother, Zitouni, or Halim, also a highly qualified scientist, were arrested at their parents' home on a suburban council estate at Vienne, south of Lyons, on Thursday. French investigators say that advanced, internet "bugging" equipment allowed them to read, in "real time", emails exchanged between the brothers and the North African branch of al-Qa'ida. The messages are alleged to have contained, in recent days, suggested targets for attacks on nuclear sites in France and other countries "allied with the United States".
The brothers, French-born with devout, hard-working Algerian parents, fit a worrying pattern seen before in the arrest of suspected Islamist extremists in France. Far from being frustrated or unemployed young men from the margins of society, both Adlène and Halim had succeeded brilliantly in the French education system and taken up senior academic or research posts.
The younger brother, Halim, has a doctorate in physiology and the biomechanics of motion from the Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris. He is now a research fellow at the Collège de France in Paris, France's most prestigious academic institution.
Neighbours of the Hicheur family in Vienne said that they were devout and hard-working people who had lived there since the 1970s. The academic success of the sons has been the pride, not just of the family, but of the whole estate.
"They were held out to young people here as an example of what you could achieve, whatever your background," said a local youth worker, who asked not to be identified. "There is a state of shock at what has happened and some anger. People think that this must be a mistake."
French counterterrorism and intelligence agencies have been tracking Adlène Hicheur for 18 months, according to French judicial sources. His name came up during another investigation into the so-called "Afghan network" of French Islamist sympathisers, trained in al-Qa'ida camps in Afghanistan in the 1990s.
Using sophisticated monitoring equipment that allows them to read emails as they are transmitted, French intelligence concluded in recent days that Adlène Hicheur had reached the "intention or desire stage" of preparing to mount an attack on a nuclear site.
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