国际英语新闻：Nuclear physicist detained in France on suspicion of Al-Qaeda links

PARIS, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- One of two men arrested by French police on suspicion of having ties to Al-Qaeda is a physicist working at the world's largest atom smasher, local media reported Saturday.

    French authorities said Friday that two brothers, who were not identified and are Frenchmen aged 25 and 32, were arrested in the southeast French city of Vienne, 33 kilometers south of Lyon.

    One of the brothers was confirmed by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, to be a physicist assigned to analysis projects in the organization.

    The physicist had no contact with anything that could be used for terrorism, CERN said in a statement.

    The physicist was as an analyst working on the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest atom accelerator, according to CERN's statement.

    "His work did not bring him into contact with anything that could be used for terrorism ... None of our research has potential for military application, and all our results are published openly in the public domain," the statement said.

    Investigators suspect the brothers of having made contacts through the Internet with Al-Qaeda members in the Islamic Maghreb,a Sunni extremist group that regularly targets government forces in Algeria and occasionally attacks foreigners, local media said.

    The suspect had not been seen at CERN for several months, according to spokesman James Gilles. That wasn't unusual because the collider wasn't working and there were no collissions to be examined.

    French police said they seized two laptops, three hard drives and several USD memory sticks from the suspects' houses and recorded cyber-exchanges between the brothers and suspected Al-Qaeda members.

    The prosecutor's office in the Isere region said the arrest of the physicist had been transferred to the anti-terrorist section of the Paris prosecutor's office.