Police blunder after 9/11 'destroyed pilot's career'

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Police blunder after 9/11 'destroyed pilot's career'
By Sean O’Neill

SCOTLAND YARD responded to an FBI request for a discreet background check on an alleged terrorism suspect by smashing down his door at 3am and arresting him at gunpoint.

Documents obtained by The Times shed new light on the bungled investigation into Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian pilot who was wrongly accused of training the September 11 hijackers.

Mr Raissi, 31, was the first person in the world to be arrested in connection with the attacks of September 11, 2001. He spent five months in prison before a judge threw out the “tenuous” case against him and ordered his release.

The Government has refused to compensate him for wrongful arrest and imprisonment and claims that the British authorities were acting properly on an American request. But US papers concerning the case clearly show that America did not ask for the arrest of Mr Raissi and suggest that British police overreacted.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,170-1797955,00.html