Seventy-two Paris airport workers, most of them Muslims, have been stripped of their security clearance for links to extremists and other fundamentalist groups, officials said on Thursday.
"Seventy-two employees had their badges withdrawn (because) they are linked to fundamentalist movements with potentially terrorist aims," said Jacques Lebrot, the deputy prefect in charge of Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport.
The "great majority" are linked to an "Islamist movement", although badges were also taken away from "just under a dozen" people suspected of links to Sri Lankan Tamil Tiger rebels as well as from one Sikh worker, he said.
Another 40 employees at the airport are currently being investigated as posing a possible security risk, Lebrot said. Sixty-eight others have been cleared after investigation.
Lebrot said earlier this month that dozens of staff had lost the right to work in sensitive customs zones since May 2005 because French anti-terrorism officials said they posed "a risk to airport security".
Unions have filed a complaint for discrimination on behalf of Muslim baggage handlers, who make up the vast majority of those concerned and claim they lost their access permits because of their Islamic faith.
Since May last year, a total of 180 airport employees have been placed under investigation by French police and intelligence services over security risks linked to terrorism.
Security fears involving workers at Charles de Gaulle airport have been raised before, and a book claiming the airport was infiltrated by Islamic militants stirred a furore when it was published in April.
In 2002, a French-Algerian airport baggage handler was arrested when weapons and explosives were found in his car. Police later said he had been the victim of a set up.