The Paris Criminal Brigade is working flat out to trace those who may have contaminated liquid used for contact lenses, as revealed last Friday [31 August]. The Animal Rights Group claimed it had carried out such action on Bite Back, an Internet site based in the United States.
''Over the last five days, over 250 bottles and tubes of the antiseptic product Savlon from Novartis have been tampered with,'' the group claimed on the Internet last week. The justification it gave was cause for concern: ''We do not want to kill any living beings like Novartis, but the side effects and the inevitable hospital stay will give people an idea of what Novartis pays for inside Huntingdon Life Sciences,'' they wrote. Huntington Life Sciences is one of the laboratories that carries out experiments on animals.
No bottle infected with the disease has yet been detected by the police. A foreign woman who complained of eye irritation proved to be a false alarm after analyses showed that this case had nothing to do with Bite Back. The group claims to have contaminated bottles with oxygen peroxide, or bleach.
As a precaution, the company Ciba Vision, a Novartis subsidiary, asked Friday any person having bought a bottle of Solo-Care Aqua between 25 and 30 August in a Krys, Vision Originale, Optical Centre or Atol store not to use it and to return it to the store so it can be exchanged. Tests are also being carried out on batches of products withdrawn from sale, as ''despite the absence of formal proof of such a crime,'' there is a need to take this information ''very seriously,'' says Cuba Vision.
That is also the attitude of the public authorities that would not like the Animal Rights Group to give any ideas to others.

''Ecoterrorism''
The poisoning of consumer products is something that haunts anti-terrorism experts in France. And one should not be surprised that the threats issued by this small English group were immediately described by the specialist magistrates as ''ecoterrorism.'' In one Islamism case relating to Chechen networks, police had discovered that a group was seeking to use ricin to kill ''non-believers.'' ''Poisoning is an obsession for some people,'' said one judge who follows antiterrorist issues very carefully. Among members of radical networks who left for Afghanistan several claimed to have received personal training in poisoning, using their dogs for testing purposes.
In Paris, the public prosecutor's office informed the Criminal Brigade Anti-terrorist Unit and the DNAT [National Antiterrorist Division] ''as a matter of precaution and prevention.'' The authorities clearly mobilized major resources in this affair to demonstrate their determination to root out the perpetrators. The investigation will run parallel to investigations by the British police on the other side of the Channel.