French investigators continue to search for a man who failed to show up for an Air France flight that was scheduled to fly from Paris to Los Angeles on Christmas Eve but was canceled for security reasons, the French government confirmed Wednesday.
The man was booked on Flight 68, one of six Air France flights that were canceled Dec. 24 and 25 after a perusal of passenger manifests and other reports raised fears that terrorists were planning to hijack a plane or carry out some other attack on U.S. soil.
“I can confirm that we are looking for someone, but I can’t say more,” French Justice Minister Dominique Perben said in a radio interview. “What’s important when someone doesn’t take a plane is to know why he didn’t take it.”
French news media later reported that the target of the search was a man believed to be an Afghan named Abdou Hai or Abdul Hay. His name does not appear in French files of suspected terrorists but was provided by U.S. authorities.
The name Hai was on the passenger manifest of one of the canceled Dec. 24 flights, but the passenger never appeared to board the plane, French media reported. French officials said they did not know whether the man was in France.
U.S. law enforcement agencies remained interested in the man. The name “rang a bell with our investigators,” said a law enforcement official.
However, U.S. intelligence officials said Wednesday that they had no interest in any of the “no-shows,” on grounds that examination of available intelligence about the flights gives no special cause for concern. “This is one big garble,” one official said.
Abdou Hai and Abdul Hay are common names.
A man named Abdul Hai Mutmaen was a spokesman for Afghanistan’s Taliban movement, which was forced from power by U.S.-backed forces in the fall of 2001.
Abdul Hay is also one of the aliases listed for Osama bin Laden in the U.S. indictment of the Al Qaeda leader. A U.S. official said there was no reason to believe that the passenger was either the Taliban spokesman or bin Laden.