The French newspaper, Liberation, said that its fact-checking department had access to the “No Fly List,” a list of people banned from traveling by the United States government, and it contains hundreds of thousands of names, including many French citizens.
And the newspaper stated - in a joint report between Alexander Horn, Fabien Libboc and Jacques Bizet - that the list established after the events of September 11, 2001 includes French Islamists, members of the Basque Country movement and "terrorists" from the direct action movement, in addition to people who were tried and released in the "Tarnac" case related to By sabotaging the pipes of the high-speed trains in France, some of the defendants in the case of the Lafarge cement manufacturer in Syria, a journalist and even a French academic and poet.
Although the existence of this list was known - according to the newspaper - its content was not, until the Swiss software hacker Maya Arson Cremo made it available to non-governmental organizations and journalists, explaining that she found the list in a blog post entitled "How to hack an airline?"
Boredom, rummaging through poorly secured servers, her search led her to the files of a small US regional airline, containing personal data for the company's employees and the "no-fly list" the US uses to deport passengers from its airspace.
According to the American publication Daily Dot, which is interested in internet culture, and which spoke with this hacker and revealed the issue, the airline confirmed the validity of the data, specifying that the regulation dates back to 2019, noting that Cremo did not release the files online, but allowed journalists and researchers to find out.
Travel ban and additional investigation
Liberation indicated that there are two tables that together contain more than 1.8 million lines of data, one of which is titled “SELECTEE” for additional investigation with its personnel, and the other is titled “Prohibited from Flying” and registration in it - according to the FBI website - prevents any " A known or suspected terrorist" from boarding a commercial aircraft leaving or heading to the United States, and any aircraft carrying a person on this list is also prohibited from transiting US airspace.
The tables seen by the newspaper contain the first names, surnames, and dates of birth of the aforementioned persons only, and many of them are in Arabic, although the column headings indicate that other information, such as nationality, place of birth, and passport number, are present in the original copy of the CIA file.
The newspaper listed the names of some Frenchmen on the list, including the Norman jihadist Maxime Hochar, and some French Islamists convicted of terrorism or murder, such as Sherif Chekatt, Mohamed Merah, and the Klein brothers and their close associates, in addition to Bruno Lafont, the former head of the Lafarge group, which is accused of financially supporting the Islamic State in Syria. and a number of his assistants.
A poet's banter
What surprised Liberation most in this list - in addition to a person who died in 2000 before the creation of this file - was a Parisian university specializing in modern and contemporary poetry, who admitted to her that he had encountered problems with the American authorities, and said that he was not allowed to travel to a conference in New York because of " A joke that was taken very seriously," as he told his wife, worried about seeing him detained by US security at Paris airport, "Don't worry, I'm returning. I might look like a terrorist," and I was denied boarding the plane because US security said I said I was a terrorist.
Among the French names on the list recommended by the American authorities to be subjected to additional security checks, the newspaper found the name of a French journalist who was convicted and imprisoned more than 40 years ago due to facts related to his closeness to the Irish Republican Army. He says he has had many problems while traveling by air since 2001. , and create this famous list.