Police have detained five suspected Islamic militants as part of a French inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks, French judicial sources said today.
The DST domestic intelligence agency arrested the five in Selestat and Colmar, in the eastern Alsace region, as part of an investigation led by anti-terrorist judges Jean-Louis Bruguiere and Jean-Francois Richard, the sources said.
Prosecutors suspect the five, two brothers, their parents and a friend of the family, of having links with Karim Mehdi, a Moroccan who is being investigated over a plot for a bomb attack on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion.
Under French anti-terrorism laws the five suspects can be held for up to four days when they must be freed or brought before a judge, who can order them to be remanded in custody.
Mehdi, 35, was arrested in June 2003 at Paris's main airport.
Police investigating the Reunion plot are deciding whether he should face a charge of "associating with criminals engaged in a terrorist enterprise".
Police also suspect Mehdi was in contact with the "Hamburg cell" which included some of the Arab hijackers behind the Sept. 11 attacks three years ago which killed almost 3,000 people.
Mehdi is believed to have been in contact with Ziad Jarrah, a Lebanese national who piloted the plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field short of its target.
French authorities have also linked Mehdi to Ramzi bin al-Shaibah, another suspect in the US attacks, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2002.