No sign traveler to Colombia involved with Paris bombers: prosecutor
By Julia Symmes Cobb and Luis Jaime Acosta BOGOTA (Reuters) - There was no sign that a woman who passed through Colombia in July was connected with last week's Paris attacks, an official with the national prosecutor's office said on Friday in response to a media report suggesting a possible link. The official from the attorney general's office told Reuters that a woman using the name Al Sakhadi Seham took a flight out of Bogota after a stay in neighboring Ecuador. She was booked to travel to Stockholm via Paris, but apparently never reached the Swedish capital, the official said. Spanish news agency EFE had reported from Bogota on Thursday that Al Sakhadi, whom it said was Syrian and involved in the Nov. 13 shootings and bombings of civilians in Paris, took a connecting flight out of the Colombian capital in July. The foreign ministry said in a statement that it had no information about the transit through Colombia of people purportedly involved in the attacks. The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility. The name Al Sakhadi Seham has not been included on lists of those French authorities said were involved in the attacks. Colombia told French authorities in July about suspicions regarding a woman who left Colombia using an Israeli passport on a flight to Stockholm with a stop-over in Paris, the foreign ministry statement, which did not identify the woman, said. A foreign ministry spokeswoman said that it could not name the woman because her case is part of a judicial investigation into corruption at the immigration agency, for which seven officials were arrested in August. Officials from Colombia's immigration agency could not be reached for comment. The EFE report cited unidentified officials from the attorney general's office saying Colombia was working with France to establish the woman's ties to the attacks. It said she also traveled through Libya and Turkey using a stolen Israeli passport under the name Ashira Kreinger. Ecuador's interior minister said the woman entered legally from Brazil, but that it had no record of her leaving Ecuador. (Reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb and Luis Jaime Acosta; Additional reporting by Alexandra Valencia in Quito and Paris newsroom; Editing by Helen Murphy and Grant McCool)
