Geneva ? A physicist working at the world’s largest atom smasher has been arrested on suspicion of links to al-Qaida, adding to the woes of the $10 billion project that ceased operation a year ago — just days after its celebrated startup.

The scientist, arrested in France, is suspected of involvement with Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, a French official said Friday. The North African group regularly targets Algerian government forces and occasionally attacks foreigners.

The judicial official said the suspect was one of two brothers arrested Thursday in southeastern French city of Vienne, 20 miles south of Lyon. The official spoke anonymously because the case is ongoing.

Police said the brothers, who were not identified, are Frenchmen aged 25 and 32. The arrest was part of a French judge’s probe into suspected terrorist links.

The physicist, who was affiliated with an outside institute, has been assigned to analysis projects at the laboratory since 2003. He was one of more than 7,000 scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest atom smasher, said the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN.

The physicist had no contact with anything that could be used for terrorism, CERN said in a statement.

“None of our research has potential for military application, and all our results are published openly in the public domain,” the statement said.

The suspect had not been seen at CERN for several months, according to spokesman James Gillies. That wasn’t unusual because the collider wasn’t working and there were no collisions to be examined.

The LHCb experiment where he worked is one of a series of research projects along the 17-mile circular tunnel under the Swiss-French border.

The collider started spectacularly in September 2008 with beams of particles flying in both directions on the first day of trying. But nine days later, a massive electric failure related to a construction fault caused the entire machine to shut down.

It has been undergoing repairs almost ever since with the bill expected to total about $40 million over the course of several years.