Quotes of the Day

American officials still deplore what they see as France's betrayal in the walk-up to the U.S.-led war in Iraq. But they can't complain about France's reliability and loyalty in the war on terror. French authorities tell Time that the June 2 arrest near Paris of a German al-Qaeda sympathizer with alleged links to two terror plots — including the Sept. 11 attacks — was carried out by French intelligence services in tandem with their American colleagues. That partnership not only snagged what French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy last week called "a senior leader of al-Qaeda" in Europe, but illustrated how international coordination can skirt legal constraints that hinder terror investigations in individual countries. "This is a serious, dangerous jihadist, someone with several trips to Afghan camps behind him, who has met top al-Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden," says a French anti- terror official about the suspect, Christian Ganczarski. "He should have been behind bars long ago. Now, he finally is."

Though the official calls the arrest a victory for antiterror forces, it left German authorities in a delicate spot. Despite multiple trips to Afghan terror camps and other alleged evidence of Ganczarski's al-Qaeda associations and proximity to terror plots, German prosecutors blamed insufficient proof of illegal activity for their failure to detain the 36-year-old or compile a solid case against him. The French official also recalls "general stupefaction" following a German decision last year allowing Ganczarski to travel abroad — though that freedom of movement ultimately proved his undoing.

After leaving Germany last November, Ganczarski turned up in late April in Saudi Arabia, where authorities struggling with Muslim fundamentalists of their own decided to arrest and expel him. It was then, French sources say, that the Americans stepped in, convincing the Saudis to send Ganczarski back to Germany through Paris — where police could detain him for questioning on their own terror cases. "The Germans couldn't or wouldn't charge Ganczarski, the Americans wanted him out of commission and his terror links fully explored," the French official comments. "We have one — possibly two — legal investigations that apply to him under way, so getting him to France was virtually synonymous with putting him behind bars."

As detailed by French investigators, Ganczarski's fundamentalist résumé suggests a rising figure in al-Qaeda operations. Following the April 11, 2002 bombing of a synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia, that killed 21 people, investigators in Germany discovered that the suicide bomber had called Ganczarski shortly before launching his attack. The log recorded on the terrorist's phone in Tunisia also revealed he had used it to call al-Qaeda terror master Khalid Shaikh Mohammed around the same time he contacted Ganczarski. Though German police believe that contact, and Ganczarski's conversation with the bomber, indicate he knew the attack was imminent, it wasn't sufficient to prosecute him for terrorism under German law. French antiterror laws use wider definitions of complicity in plots, allowing investigating magistrates Jean-Louis Bruguière and Jean-François Ricard to jail Ganczarski as a probable co-conspirator in the Djerba attack.

But the investigation doesn't end there. As in the Djerba attack, French nationals were among the victims of Sept. 11, which led terror specialists Bruguière and Ricard to launch a legal inquiry into that strike as well. While investigating Ganczarski's links to the Djerba plot, German officials turned up telephone numbers of notorious jihadists at his Duisburg home. One was a contact for Moroccan Islamist Mounir el-Motassadeq, a German resident sentenced last February to 15 years in prison for helping the Sept. 11 terrorists prepare their attack. Another number was that of Ramzi Binalshibh, a central planner of the U.S. strike who fled Germany shortly before Sept. 11 and remained at large until his arrest last September in Karachi, Pakistan. "With the Afghan record and al-Qaeda links, how could the Germans have let this guy remain free?" the French official wonders.

"The information that the French have is the same stuff we knew all along," retorts Kai Hirschmann, a terrorism analyst for the German State Department. "The difference is that, under French law, it's enough to arrest him, but under German law it isn't." That explains why the U.S. turned to France to deal with a radical both nations wanted out of commission. This is one war that everyone in the alliance can agree on.

• BRUCE CRUMLEY | Paris
• American and French agents nab a suspected terrorist