Preliminary charges have been filed against a physicist who’s been working at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva.

The charges are for “criminal association with a terrorist enterprise.” The 32-year-old is suspected of involvement with Al Qaeda’s north African wing.

The man has been working on the Large Hadron Collider Project at CERN since 2003 but was not a CERN employee. He worked there under a contract with an outside institute. CERN says that his work didn’t bring him into contact with anything that could be used for terrorism.

Under French law, filing preliminary charges gives police time to carry out further investigations before deciding whether to send a suspect for trial or drop the case.