TOKYO — National police were investigating a news report that a veteran Al Qaeda operative under arrest in Europe had been based in Japan for more than a year, possibly to establish a terrorist cell, a police spokesman said Wednesday.
Investigators had no information on the man -- identified by Kyodo News service as Frenchman Lionel Dumont -- and could not confirm his links to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, a National Police Agency spokesman said on condition of anonymity.
Kyodo reported Tuesday that investigators believed Dumont used a fake passport to enter Japan in July 2002 and stayed until September 2003, when he went to Malaysia. The report cited unidentified investigative sources. It previously was reported in France that Dumont had been hiding in Indonesia.
Kyodo said Dumont provided money and equipment to the network. Dumont, 33, was in contact with about 10 other foreign residents of Japan, and investigators suspect he may have been trying to set up a terrorist cell, it said.
National newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported in Wednesday's afternoon edition that Dumont worked as a used- car dealer in the northern city of Niigata. The report, which cited unidentified police sources, said his bank account records showed that he received remittances ranging from $900 to $8,850 on 10 occasions.
Dumont arrived in Tokyo from Singapore, and made several visits to Germany and Malaysia before leaving Japan, public broadcaster NHK said.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Japan was stepping up checks at airports and shipping ports to foil would-be visitors using fake passports.
"I am ordering authorities to boost security and be on the lookout in many areas, including immigration," Koizumi told reporters Wednesday.
Dumont is a convert to radical Islam whose criminal activities date to the mid-1990s. He was convicted in absentia by a French court and sentenced to life in prison in October 2001 for a string of armed robberies, an attempted bombing and other violent crimes as part of a gang in northern France.
In 1997, Dumont was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Bosnia for involvement in terrorist acts there, including the murder of a police officer. But he escaped from Bosnian custody in 1999.
Dumont was arrested Dec. 13 at a Munich hotel and extradited to France on Tuesday. Prosecutor Joachim Ettenhofer, who handled the case, said the French extradition request cited the robbery accusations but no political crimes.
