Nuclear expert admits Al Qaeda role

An internationally renowned nuclear physicist has admitted to French investigators that he led a second life as an al Qaeda "mole", say French judicial sources.

A picture began to emerge at the weekend of AdlEne Hicheur, 32, who works at the "Big Bang" hadron collider on the Swiss-French border, and who is likely to be formally accused today of "links with a terrorist organisation".

His brother, Zitouni Hicheur, 25, who was arrested with him last Thursday at their parents' home south of Lyon, has been freed.

Investigators believe that the elder brother, who has worked on high-level nuclear research projects in Britain and the United States, acted alone when he sent emails to Algerian members of al Qaeda and listed potential terrorist targets in France.

According to the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, security services fear AdlEne Hicheur was being groomed to become the "pivot" of a terror campaign starting in France but possibly spreading to other European countries.

One worrying line of inquiry suggests that members of Eta, the Basque separatist group, had also been recruited to "case" potential targets. Contrary to earlier reports, nuclear sites are not believed to have been on the list.

AdlEne Hicheur was once a research fellow at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in England and studied for his PhD at Stanford University in California. He is the eldest of six brothers and sisters of Algerian-born parents, who live on a council estate in Vienne.

The siblings, born in France, each succeeded brilliantly in the French education system. No other family members are suspected of al Qaeda links.

Neighbours described the Hicheur family as devout and hard-working people. "They were held out to young people here as an example of what you could achieve, whatever your background," a local youth worker said.

"There is a state of shock at what has happened and some anger. People think this must be a mistake."

- INDEPENDENT