PARIS (AP) - An Algerian man arrested in Britain under anti-terrorism laws was handed over to France on Saturday for questioning, French authorities said.
Kamel Daoudi, 27, was being held at French secret service headquarters in Paris, judicial and police officials told The Associated Press. Under French law, authorities may hold terrorism suspects for up to 96 hours without pressing charges.
Daoudi allegedly fled Paris when seven suspected terrorists were rounded up there on Sept. 21. He was arrested in Britain four days later.
The Sept. 21 arrests were made as part of an investigation into an alleged plot to attack American interests in France, including the U.S. Embassy in Paris.
British police confirmed that the arrest of Daoudi and another two men in the city of Leicester were linked to arrests in France and Belgium.
Separately, police in London continued to question Lotfi Raissi, 27, an Algerian pilot arrested in the British capital. (Read photo caption)
Prosecutors have described him as a flight instructor for some of the hijackers who flew a plane into the Pentagon - the first overseas suspect that officials have directly linked to the Sept. 11 attacks, believed by U.S. authorities to have been masterminded by Osama bin Laden.
Prosecutors in London told a London magistrates court on Friday that Raissi made several trips to the United States this summer, trained with several of the suspected hijackers and flew with one of them on June 23 from Las Vegas to Arizona.
Raissi, who denies any involvement in the attacks, was formally arrested Friday after a week in custody, on a U.S. federal court arrest warrant alleging that he gave false information on a Federal Aviation Administration form. The warrant also says Raissi failed to disclose a 1993 criminal conviction for theft in England.
Raissi has not been formally charged with any offense and will remain in custody in London pending an additional hearing scheduled for Oct. 5. U.S. authorities have 60 days to file an extradition request, British officials said.
Since the terrorist strikes, some 20 people have been arrested in a European sweep for suspected associates of bin Laden.
In Germany on Saturday, authorities announced the arrests of three men suspected of plotting attacks in Germany while belonging to a fundamentalist terror organization.
The federal prosecutor's office said in a statement that authorities have no evidence linking the men to the Sept. 11 attacks.
The suspects - one man from Turkey and two others from Yemen - were detained Thursday in the central German city of Wiesbaden and charged with possession of weapons and forging documents, the statement said.
``The accused are suspected of plotting violent attacks in Germany while belonging to an organization with a fundamentalist Islamic background,'' the statement said.
German authorities were also launching an investigation into a Hamburg-based group of people from Arabic countries suspected of being part of terrorist cells, the statement said.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Arrested Algerian pilot Lotfi Raissi, right, arrives at Bow Street Court in London Friday Sept. 28, 2001. Raissi appeared before the court in London on a U.S. warrant seeking extradition to the U.S. on charges of giving false information on an application for a pilot's licence. A prosecutor told the court that Raissi was the chief instructor of four of the pilots that were responsible for the hijackings of aircraft involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. (AP Photo/PA, Johnny Green)
- Sep 28 11:03 AM ET