WASHINGTON — U.S. government officials said Thursday they believe some of the passengers boarding one of the three Air France flights from Paris to Los Angeles that were canceled because of security concerns this week might have intended to hijack it and crash land in Las Vegas.
Police in Paris questioned 13 people who had checked in for two Air France flights that were canceled Christmas Eve because of a terror warning from U.S. authorities, but no evidence of wrongdoing was found, the French Interior Ministry said. All 13 were released.
But U.S. officials said they remain suspicious about some passengers who did not show up at the airport to claim their seats on the ultimately aborted Flight 68 from Paris to Los Angeles. One of those who did not appear for the Christmas Eve flight apparently is a trained pilot, one U.S. official said.
"We still have an interest in talking to those people who didn’t show up," said one American official knowledgable about the investigation. "There might be more to come on this."
Despite French statements suggesting some American fears about the Air France flights were groundless, U.S. government officials said they believe they might have averted a terrorist attack by arranging for the flights’ cancellation. Officials said they feared al-Qaida operatives planned to hijack one of the flights and use the plane as a missile to attack a site on or near its route
Moreover, American officials said that intelligence indicators suggest that al-Qaida might have set other terrorist operations in motion that do not involve aviation and are not centered in California.
"Our fear is that other things are going on" that have nothing to do with jetliner flights in or out of U.S. airports, said one U.S. official briefed on high-level intelligence. "The concern is that there still could be a lot of activity that was underway."
U.S. officials have said that they passed on to the French government names of travelers they suspected might commandeer the planes on the Paris-Los Angeles route in a terror attack.
Seven of the questioned people had checked in at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport for Air France flight 68 on Christmas eve, according to a French official. He identified them as four Americans, one German, one French citizen and one Belgian.
The people were taken aside and questioned extensively by police, the official said. Their baggage was searched. But no sign of terror connections was found, he said, and all had been released by 7 a.m. Paris time Christmas morning. Six other passengers who showed up for flight 70 to Los Angeles were also questioned and released.
Associated Press
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