France: Muslim airport workers targeted in terror crackdown

Authorities at Paris’ largest airport have stripped several dozen employees - almost all Muslims – of their security badges in a crackdown against terrorism.

Now four baggage handlers who lost their clearance have filed a joint discrimination complaint this week, saying they had been unfairly associated with terrorism because they were Muslims, their lawyers said. Some had been in their jobs for up to five years.

The baggage handlers and other employees had been barred from secure areas at Charles de Gaulle airport since February, said Jacques Lebrot, who oversees the airport.

Lawyers and community groups said the baggage handlers, who worked for sub-contractors at the airport, were likely to lose their jobs because such work depended on such security clearances.

The cases were “linked to terrorism, of course”, Lebrot said, adding that the crackdown followed recommendations by France’s anti-terrorism co-ordination unit, UCLAT, as part of an 18-month investigation.

“You don’t strip people of their badges for small matters,” he said.

The crackdown was part of heightened security in France, after terror attacks in Britain, Spain and the US in recent years.

Lebrot, citing security reasons, would not say whether the “several dozen” people who lost their badges had been involved in specific plots.

“Mr X or Y could have been suspected because corresponding facts … suggested he belonged to a sizeable network,” Lebrot said.

Others could have been stripped of the badges because they were “impressionable and manipulated” by such networks.

In letters from the regional government office, the employees were told that they presented a “significant danger to airport security”, or had shown “personal behaviour threatening airport security”.

Lawyers for those who lost their badges said that under police questioning, they were never told of the reasons they lost their badges – but were repeatedly asked about their religion.

“The link among these people is that either they are Arab – or practise their religion in a normal way,” said Eric Moutet, a lawyer for the four employees suing in administrative court. Authorities, he said, “are in essence asking people to prove they are not terrorists”.

Lebrot insisted the employees “know” why they lost their clearance, but refused to discuss specific cases. He said all but two were Muslims, but sharply denied that there was any religious reason involved.