Physicist languishes in French prison
Physicist languishes in French prison for two years without trial: French intelligence services say he is a dangerous terrorist... family members and colleagues argue that he is a brilliant young physicist singled out because of his academic background. - French intelligence services say that Adlène Hicheur is a dangerous terrorist who was caught plotting attacks in Europe and beyond; family members and colleagues argue that he is a brilliant young physicist singled out because of his academic background. Guilty or innocent, on Saturday Hicheur will have spent two years in detention without trial. Hicheur, now 34, was arrested on 8 October 2009 in his home town of Vienne. At the time, the French-Algerian was a postdoc in high-energy physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and was working on the LHCb detector at CERN, Europe's premier particle-physics laboratory near Geneva in Switzerland.