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PARIS - Seventy-two employees of Paris's main airport have been stripped of their security clearance after an anti-terrorism probe found they posed a security risk.
Trade unions at Charles de Gaulle Airport have threatened to strike over the issue, which they say amounts to religious discrimination. They claim that the workers, some of whom have been sacked, were targeted solely because they are practising Muslims.
The employees - mainly aircraft cleaners or baggage handlers - are suspected by France's anti-terrorism co-ordination unit, Uclat, of having links with radical Islam or of having attended terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Jacques Lebrot, the deputy prefect of the Seine-Saint Denis department where the airport is located, said all but two of the workers who have lost their accreditation are Muslims.
Charles de Gaulle airport draws many of its employees from the troubled northern suburbs, where much of the population is of north African origin.
- INDEPENDENT
