Paris Airport Bars 72 Muslim Employees
Charles Johnson
Thu Nov 2, 2006 at 2:51 pm PST • Views: 354
Don’t the French realize that by banning extremist airport employees, they’re only creating more extremist airport employees and fueling airport extremism worldwide? Paris airport bars 72 employees. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)
Some 72 airport staff, most of them Muslims, have been stripped of their security clearance at France’s main airport, Charles de Gaulle in Paris.
They pose a risk because of alleged links to groups with “potentially terrorist aims”, officials say. The staff, who include baggage handlers, are said to have visited Pakistan and Afghanistan. Some of them are suing the authorities, claiming they are being discriminated against because of their religion.
The interior ministry last year ordered a security review of airport staff. “Seventy-two employees had their badges withdrawn [because] they are linked to fundamentalist movements with potentially terrorist aims,” Jacques Lebrot, the deputy prefect in charge of the airport, told the AFP news agency.
The “great majority” were linked to an “Islamist movement”, he said.
Badges were also taken away from “just under a dozen” people suspected of links to Sri Lankan Tamil Tiger rebels as well as from one Sikh worker.
Another 40 employees at the airport were currently being investigated as posing a possible security risk, he said.
It’s not clear if this group of 72 extremist airport employees is in addition to the 43 who were barred two weeks ago.
Frank says: