Bombs found at Sarkozy conference venue

An elaborate system of incendiary devices was discovered at a management school where French president Nicolas Sarkozy is to address business leaders.

The devices were discovered yesterday at the campus of HEC, an international business school outside Paris that is hosting an August 29-31 conference for Medef, the federation of French business leaders. Sarkozy is expected to speak there on August 30.

Cleaners found the devices in a bathroom. The system included 16 bottles filled with an unidentified liquid hydrocarbon, along with three triggers, an electronic timer and a battery, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

The bathroom is near an office that is often used by Laurence Parisot, Medef’s president, during the group’s annual late-summer conference.

The prosecutor’s office said the device would not have exploded but could have sparked a major fire. Anti-terrorism investigators were working on the case.