Published: 10 October, 2009, 15:26
Edited: 10 October, 2009, 12:00
A nuclear physicist has been arrested in France on suspicion of having links with Al-Qaeda terrorists. He'd been conducting research on Europe's Large Hadron Collider.
The native Algerian had worked in Switzerland on scientific projects since 2003. The European Nuclear Research Centre, known as CERN, is developing the Collider, which aims to re-create the Big Bang.
The organization’s Director General, Rolf-Dieter Heuer, says the man arrested is not one of his employees:
“They are scientific users of CERN, they are not employed by CERN, and we have roughly 10,000 of these users,” he explained.
“All our research is open. Everything is public. Everything is published. There are no secrets, so they have no chance to give any secrets away,” he added.