US Authorities Challenge French DJ's Terror Links

Laurent Garnier cancelled a planned DJ tour of America last weekend, after American immigration officials sabotaged his visa request with bureaucratic obstacles.

"They did not refuse it, it is more unclear than that, they are just making it impossible for me to receive it," the superstar DJ complained on his website this week.

"It looks like France is now considered either as a terrorist, communist or a threatening country."

Bureaucratic obstacles included a new form asking the DJ whether he had any experience with biological weapons ('we make good Camembert, does that count-' he quipped) and an order for the globe-trotting artist to list every single country he'd visited in the last ten years (with dates).

"I have thought a minute about this one for roughly a minute, each time I've been abroad in the past 10 years I would have to put around 900 dates and countries," said Garnier.

Clearly furious, the French DJ revealed that he'd spent US$3,400 and huge amounts of time following the new rules, before understanding he'd no longer get a visa.

"Is this the price that French artists have to pay because of our government's position (on the Iraq War)," he concluded.

"All I can say is that I hope that one day artists will be free again to travel to the States."
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