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Cern LHC tunnel that runs under Geneva and neighbouring France

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Cern (European Centre for Nuclear Research) confirmed over the weekend that a man arrested with his brother in the south of France Thursday 8 October has worked at Cern since 2003 as a contract employee for an outside company, not as a Cern employee. “His work did not bring him into contact with anything that could be used for terrorism,” the organization says in a press release, noting that “Cern is a particle physics research laboratory whose research addresses fundamental questions about the universe. None of our research has potential for military application.”

French authorities say the two men, whose identity has not been released, were taken into custody in Vienne, south of Lyons.

AP reports the police there as saying the brothers are 25 and 32 and their arrest is part of investigations into a group known as Aqim (Al Qaeda in the Maghreb), sometimes referred to as the North African wing of Al Queda. The men are reportedly Algerian, and other reports from France indicate that they are suspected of close ties to the group, but French police are providing little information while the investigation is on-going. According to AP, the investigation has been transferred to Paris.

Cern says the man, an engineer, worked on the LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty) experiment, designed to check what happened after the Big Bang. He would have had no access to the tunnel which is part of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) project and that runs under France and Switzerland, in the border area near Geneva. The LHC was stopped shortly after it started in September 2008 but Cern expects to start it again in November 2009.

Links to other sites: Associated Press, Cern LHCb, Guardian