Wednesday October 17, 2001

PARIS - French authorities launched an inquiry into a suspect in U.S. custody in connection with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks while officials in Turkey and Jordan said yesterday that planned attacks on U.S. consulates and embassies have been thwarted in recent weeks.

The Paris prosecutor's office has opened an inquiry into Zacarias Moussaoui, a

French-Moroccan now in U.S. custody and being investigated in connection with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, judicial officials said yesterday.

The inquiry could shed light into possible links between the suicide hijackers and a broad network of Islamic militants in Europe believed linked to Osama bin Laden and suspected of plotting attacks against U.S. interests across the continent.

In Istanbul yesterday, a police official said a planned bomb attack on the U.S. consulate there had been thwarted in recent weeks. U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have said four bombing attacks have been thwarted since Sept. 11 against U.S. sites in France, Turkey, Yemen and Belgium.

Officials in Jordan said Jordanian and Lebanese security authorities helped derail terrorist plots over the weekend against U.S., British and other embassies in Lebanon.

The officials declined to say who was behind the attempts, but suggested it was a group linked to bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the attacks on the United States.

Authorities have arrested 225 people in about 40 countries following U.S. and foreign intelligence reports suggesting that they were involved in plotting or assisting terrorism, U.S. government officials have told The Associated Press.

In Spain, authorities have been working with U.S. law enforcement as they trace the steps of suspected hijacker Mohamed Atta, who is believed to have met with Islamic extremists there months before the hijackings.

The French probe is being handled by France's top anti-terrorism judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere. It was opened on Friday, on the basis of the broad charge of "criminal association in connection with a terrorist enterprise," according to judicial officials who spoke on customary condition of anonymity.

The charge covers diverse activities and is used so justice officials can cast their net as widely as possible.

Moussaoui, 33, of Moroccan origin, had been on a French counterintelligence agency watch-list since 1999.

He was detained in Minnesota on Aug. 17, weeks before the attacks, after he aroused suspicions when he asked to learn how to fly planes, but not to take off or land.

Arrested on immigration violations, Moussaoui was in jail when the attacks occurred and has since been flown to New York where a federal grand jury has been convened.

He was born in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, in southwest France, and lived with his family in Narbonne in the 1980s before moving to Montpellier, in the south, to attend a university there.

In other developments yesterday, officials in Finland said the Foreign Ministry last year denied a visa to Hamza Alghamdi, a suspected hijacker aboard United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston that crashed into the World Trade Center.

Alghamdi applied in Saudi Arabia for a tourist visa to visit Finland last October but was denied because he provided false information, officials said.

In Belgium, authorities released two men arrested last month during a sweep against terrorist suspects in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Three more suspects remain jailed.

The two released, identified as Fauzi el Hadouti and Mohamed Salem, ran a snack bar in Brussels, where police found quantities of chemicals that investigators believe could be used to make bombs. They remain under investigation but were granted conditional release Friday by a Brussels court.