Baggage handler with explosives arrested at Paris airport PARIS (AP) =97 A baggage handler arrested at Paris' Charles de Gaulle= airport=20 had a mini-arsenal of weapons stashed in the trunk of his car, including=20 explosive devices ready to be used, police officials said Monday. Abdrazak= =20 Besseghir, a 27-year-old French man of Algerian origin, was arrested late=20 Saturday after police searched his car and found in the trunk an automatic= =20 handgun, a machine gun, five bars of plastic explosives and two detonators,= =20 officials said on condition of anonymity. The explosive devices were ready= =20 to be ignited. Police were notified by a caller who spotted Besseghir=20 standing at the trunk of his car with one of the guns Saturday morning.=20 Police watched him throughout the day and stopped Besseghir when he=20 returned to his car that afternoon in the airport's parking lot. As a=20 baggage handler, Besseghir had security clearance for several restricted=20 areas of Charles de Gaulle airport, one of Europe's busiest and the point=20 of departure last year for shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Anti-terrorism prosecutors opened an investigation into the case=20 immediately after the arrest. Besseghir was being detained in the=20 anti-terrorism section of Paris' police headquarters and can be held up to= =20 four days without being placed under investigation or formally charged. During questioning, Besseghir refused to explain the presence of weapons in= =20 his trunk, saying he suspected "a plot" against him, said an official close= =20 to the investigation. Police said Besseghir had no previous record apart=20 from a vandalism incident in 1997 and is not known to have ties to militant= =20 Islamic groups. The suspect's home in the Paris suburb of=20 Seine-Saint-Denis was searched, and police detained his father, two=20 brothers and a family friend after questioning. The arrest comes just days= =20 after the Interior Ministry announced it had dismantled a terror cell with= =20 ties to Chechen rebels and al-Qaeda that planned bomb or toxic gas attacks= =20 in France and Russia. A total of nine people were arrested in half a dozen= =20 raids by France's counterintelligence agency, the DST, in suburban=20 Paris. Among suspected targets were the Russian Embassy in Paris and=20 Russians in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, the ministry said. On=20 alert for possible terror strikes during the holiday season, the French=20 government has increased police presence in public areas such as department= =20 stores, train stations and airports. As part of an effort to reinforce airport security following the Sept. 11,= =20 2001 attacks, French authorities ran background checks on some 80,000=20 airport employees and, as a result, revoked security badges from some 200=20 people, the Parisien newspaper reported Monday. Charles de Gaulle airport= =20 has installed new explosives-detecting machines and added bomb-sniffing=20 dogs as part of new airport security measures. Richard Reid, a British=20 citizen and al-Qaeda sympathizer, has pleaded guilty to trying to blow up a= =20 Paris-to-Miami flight he boarded at Charles de Gaulle airport last=20 December. Reid had explosives hidden in his sneakers and was spotted as he= =20 tried to light the fuse. Reid, 29, is in a state prison in Walpole, Mass.,= =20 and will be sentenced next month. He faces between 60 years and life in=20 prison. *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) : escape email mailto:ejames@escape.ca Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Site of the Week: www.tobagoweddings.com/ TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************