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| Europe |
| Germans Begin Trial of Tunisian Accused of Plotting Bomb Attacks |
| 2004-05-04 |
| A Tunisian man accused of plotting bomb attacks on Jewish and U.S. targets in Germany and trying to found an Islamist terrorist organization went on trial in Berlin on Tuesday. The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office said Ihsan Garnaoui had trained at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and traveled to Germany in January 2003 to plan the attacks. ... Garnaoui asked people he knew through a Berlin mosque to help him carry out the attacks and they had agreed to help him found a group. Garnaoui’s defense lawyer Margarete von Galen told the court there was no evidence he had stayed in Afghanistan or tried to form a terrorist group in Berlin. She said that the prosecution’s charges against him were an "experiment." She demanded to know why, if the evidence was strong as prosecutors alleged, only Garnaoui was charged but half a dozen other participants in the alleged plot were not. .... The prosecution said Garnaoui had planned to detonate several bombs by mobile telephone during a demonstration in the German capital at the start of the Iraq war. He was arrested on 20 March 2003, before the demonstration. .... The trial takes place against the backdrop of a heated debate among German lawmakers over a planned immigration law. Talks on a new bill broke down at the weekend after the Greens, junior partners in the Social Democrat-led coalition, opposed wishes by the conservative opposition and Interior Minister Otto Schily to make it easier for Germany to dedeport people it believed posed a threat to society. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |
| #1 Dedeport, thats grounds for a mistrial. Whats one to do? Their hands are now tied. Try as you might, simply impossible. |
| Posted by: Lucky 2004-05-04 12:23:39 PM |