Large Hadron Collider Physicist Linked to Al Qaeda

[Ichingcarpenter]

From the article:

An unnamed French scientist was arrested Thursday, suspected of ties to terrorism. The scientist was a contractor working with the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) on the Large Hadron Collider, the largest particle accelerator ever built, which in theory has the potential to create small black holes or equally world destroying strangelets.

“His work did not bring him into contact with anything that could be used for terrorism,” CERN said in a statement. “CERN is a particle physics research laboratory whose research addresses fundamental questions about the universe. None of our research has potential for military application, and all our results are published openly in the public domain.”

The scientist is suspected of being in contact with members of Al Qaeda involved in the North African Sunni terrorist group Islamic Maghreb, any ally of Al Qaeda.

http://teknocratix.com/2009/10/10/large-hadron-collider-physicist-linked-to-al-qaeda/


According to French newspaper Le Figaro, judicial sources point that the man—who has been working as a particle physics contractor since 2003—has links to Al Qaeda groups in the Islamic Maghreb. Le Figaro said that he had suggested terrorist targets in French soil. There's word if the target list also included the LHC, however.

In a public statement, CERN was quick to remember that the LHC is peaceful, and no gain can be obtained from it by any terrorist:

http://teknocratix.com/2009/10/10/large-hadron-collider-physicist-
linked-to-al-qaeda/

[Ichingcarpenter]

1. More from Nature magazine

The suspect, a French-Algerian, was taken into custody by French police on 8 October in the town of Vienne. He is believed to be a postdoc at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) who, since 2003, has been performing data analysis on one of four major experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's most powerful particle accelerator.


Some 700 scientists work on the LHCb detector.Maximilien Brice/CERN
According to the French newspaper Le Figaro, French antiterrorism police arrested the 32-year-old researcher together with his 25-year-old brother. The duo is suspected of passing along information about possible terrorism targets inside France to members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb — the North African wing of al-Qaeda.


http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091009/full/news.2009.993.html

[ixion]

2. "suspected of ties to terrorism" means nothing

charge the person with an actual crime, or release them.

[Posteritatis]

3. Comment above yours has the specific charge

The whole "suspected of ties to terrorism" thing is typically a US-media-ism; media on this side of the pond loves "linking" everything; I imagine relatively few people are actually charged with such a thing. (At least I hope so.)

[NNadir]

4. This proves conclusively that nuclear physics is a bad and evil science and should

be banned.