Brice Hortefeux, the French interior minister, has revealed that one of the two mail bombs, which were set to explode last week was defused approximately 17 minutes from exploding.
The French official provided no other details when he was interviewed for France's state-run France-2 television. He also did not provide where he got the information about the timing.
Investigators isolated the Chicago-bound packages and removed them from the cargo planes in England and the United Arab Emirates Friday. There, they found the explosives wired to cell phones and concealed in toner cartridges for computer printers.
Communication cards had been removed so that the phones could not receive calls, the Chicago Tribune reported. This detail made it likely the terrorists intended alarm or timer functions to detonate the bombs, noted the newspaper.
In October, an alert about an al-Qaida plot in Europe had been issued, indicating the terror group was "expecting to be active" on the continent, officials said.
French officials put the Saudi Arabian intelligence in the context of alerts issued in September based on intelligence from Interpol and Algeria, saying the information was "serious and reliable," the EUobserver said.
"I can tell you -- and it's not information that's been made public yet -- that even a few hours, a few days ago, there was a new message, from the Saudi services, indicating to us that al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula was certainly active, or expecting to be active, in Europe, especially France," Hortefeux said.
Hortefeux said the French national security alert level would remain "reinforced red," a step below the maximum "scarlet" level.
The minister said France, which has 61 people imprisoned on terrorism charges, is monitoring extremist Web sites and "a certain number of people who study at extremist Koranic institutes" who are planning to return to France from North Africa.
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