Large Hadron Collider Scientist Arrested For al-Qaeda Ties

mindbrane writes "A scientist working as a subcontractor on a peripheral LHC project has been arrested as a terrorist. The CBC is running a story outlining the arrest of a man on Thursday in south-east France for suspected al-Qaeda links: 'CERN officials said the man, whose name has not been revealed, was working under contract with an outside institute and said he had no contact with anything that could have been used for terrorism. He had been at CERN since 2003, officials said. ... The news that someone with terrorist connections might have worked at the facility is likely to cause concern because of both the high profile of the giant physics experiment and also the technology in use, which has made some members of the public nervous.'"

Comments

Re:old news?

[dword]

I thought that this was covered in the press last week, so why is it in /. now??

Because /. is mostly an aggregator and doesn't bring in fresh news. It just puts all the "news for nerds" that you can find out there in one place.

Re:Six degrees of separation

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone can be linked to Al Qaeda

Some in a lot less than six degrees. Remember Bush was friends with Osama Bin Laden's family. It's not trolling it's a fact. The whole point is the same world leaders that are supposed to be fighting terrorism have close ties to terrorist families or are at least only a few degrees from most terrorist leaders.

Better news article

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a much better news article than the one from CBC:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/nuclear-terror-suspect-is-top-physicist-1800927.html

It names the suspect and it explains how he was tracked and arrested.
According to the article, the suspect studied for his PhD at the Stanford University Linear Accelerator Center, stayed at EPFL and has published several articles.

I am french

[aepervius]

And I do not trust the DST (or whatever it is called nowadays) as far as I can throw them. Even less than that. I can remember the "rainbow warrior" ship story, for example. It could very possible that they found a real idiot planning to do a terrist attack, or it is possible this is polically motivated and somebody needed that sort of "news" for nefarious purpose. We'll see in the next days.

Re:Six degrees of separation

[hobo sapiens]

Kaiser Wilhelm and Czar Nicholas were cousins, and yet their countries were largely responsible for starting WWI...point being?

Re:Six degrees of separation

[Anonymous Coward]

They weren't, well, not that closely - the common root was Victoria so they were cousins by about 3 generations off at that point.

Contradicting itself!

[Hurricane78]

[...] the arrest of a man on Thursday in south-east France for suspected al-Qaeda links: 'CERN officials said the man, whose name has not been revealed, was working under contract with an outside institute and said he had no contact with anything that could have been used for terrorism. [...]'

You have to decide: Either he's in arrest for a crime, or he is suspected and nothing is known or proven yet (and most likely never will).
I mean it's right in there: They have not found any ties. They just kinda heard from someone that kinda he could somehow be in an organization that somehow kinda could possibly be linked to...uuum...something.
One parrot tells it to the next parrot, and soon it's al-Quaeda, and he's arrested for shit.

But a friend told me that he came from Morocco to France, and the cops there were just like in Morocco. When he came to Germany, he was shocked, that the cops treated him like a human being. (And our cops still are on the level of semi-criminal bouncers who beat up people because they like to. It must be pretty damn bad in France.)
So I can comprehend how it can come to shit like this. But that does not make it OK.

I will wait and see what charges they bring up (if any). Or if it's the usual witch trial, like in those countries... you know... where "terrorism" "comes from"...

Re:You did your reading, didn't you?

[AliasMarlowe]

will be created in 12000 years by Harry Seldon,

Hari doesn't like people mis-spelling his name. You'll probably be retroactively erased from psychohistory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hari_Seldon