Tokyo: Japanese police today (May 26, 2004) arrested four people, including an Indian, for links with Frenchman Lionel Dumont suspected of al-Qaeda connections.

The arrests came during raids by police in 10 locations across Japan yesterday, including Tokyo and the Northern city of Niigata where Dumont, a French citizen with a history of violent crime, worked as a car salesman in 2002-2003, a media report said.

The four arrested include Syed Naseer Syed Gaffar, 32, an Indian living in Higashi, Ahmed Faishal, 26, a Bangladeshi living in Kawaguchi, Islam Mohamed Himu, 33, another Bangladeshi living in Toda and Kane Yaya, 41, a Malian living in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward, police sources said.

Dumont, who is believed to have been a senior al-Qaeda member, telephoned locations, including homes of foreign Muslims living in Japan and offices of a mobile phone company run by Himu, before he left Japan and before he was arrested in Germany in December last year and extradited to France last week, police said.

He is also believed to have provided money and equipment to radicals, including al-Qaeda, and may have been in Japan to set up a terror cell, Kyodo news agency said quoting police sources.

Japanese Government said it is considering that the men believed to be connected to the international terror cell easily and repeatedly passed Japanese immigration controls using a false passport.

"I expect (investigations) to show what happened," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said and admitted to inadequate passport controls at Japan's airports.