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Four confessed Islamic militants arrested in France were planning terrorist attacks in the near future, the Interior Ministry said Friday.
The ministry said two of the four suspects told investigators they received training in the Pankisi Gorge, a remote region in Georgia that borders Chechnya, and had met Chechen rebel leaders.
The four were arrested Monday in a Paris suburb by French security agents acting on orders from top counter-terrorism judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere. Agents also found suspected detonator components and chemicals used to make electronic circuits, the ministry said in a statement.
"There is no doubt, given the elements found, that one or several terrorist actions were being prepared in the more or less short term," it said.
Agents also found a suit to protect against nuclear, chemical and biological attack that is still being analyzed, as well as two empty gas bottles and electronic components that could serve as detonators, the statement said.
It named one of those arrested as Merouane Benhamed. It said Benhamed was a former leader of Algerian fighters and a veteran of conflicts in Afghanistan and Chechnya. The statement gave no details. The arrests followed an investigation into Chechen networks, the statement said, without giving details.
The four, identified earlier as three Algerians and a Moroccan, were expected to appear Friday before a judge.
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday that the suspects were thought to have spent time in training camps in Afghanistan and Chechnya.
Those Chechen ties have shored up Russia's argument that Chechen rebels are an inseparable part of the international terrorist network, a top Kremlin official said Friday.
"This information confirms the existence of a terrorist network with a wide, cross-border infrastructure. It is a chain of recruiting fighters, in the given case in Western Europe, their preparation, in this case in Afghanistan and the Pankisi Gorge, and their combat experience, which happened in Chechnya," said Sergei Yastrzhembsky, the Kremlin's spokesman on Chechnya.
The French interior minister also said the militants had been in contact with Rabah Kadre, who was arrested with two other suspects last month in Britain on terrorism-related charges.
Kadre, 35, is accused of possessing materials for the "preparation, instigation or commission" of terrorism. According to French news reports, he has links to the al-Qaida network and had been to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.
Sarkozy indicated the suspects were planning an attack, saying that "with these four individuals, it was better to arrest them before rather than after." He did not elaborate.
Bruguiere, the anti-terrorism judge with wide powers of investigation, has recently stepped up arrests amid mounting concerns in Europe that a terror attack may be imminent.
(Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
