SAN DIEGO, Jan. 25 (UPI) -- U.S. and Mexican authorities questioned a man suspected of phoning in a bogus tip that Chinese chemists planned to detonate a nuclear device in Boston.
Mexican state judicial police detained Jose Ernesto Beltran Quinones, whom the FBI had identified Friday as a person sought for questioning, in Mexicali, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Tuesday.
The phone tip to California authorities caused a massive nationwide investigation and prompted the governor of Massachusetts to cut short a trip to attend President Bush's inauguration last week.
Beltran's interrogation continued into late Monday, an FBI official said.
"The first area of concern for the FBI is to resolve any pending national security threat issues, and that issue being the statement that was made that nuclear material was being brought into the United states," said Dan Dzwilewski, chief of the FBI office in San Diego.
Officials were focusing on Beltran's motives, which may have been anger that he had not been paid for smuggling Chinese immigrants into the country, Dzwilewski said.
During the phone call, now believed to be fake, the caller said the terrorists planned to detonate a dirty bomb in Boston.
