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| Britain |
| Ricin plot leader gets 10 years |
| 2005-06-30 |
| An Algerian court on Wednesday sentenced an Algerian, whom Britain said was a key conspirator in an al Qaeda plot to launch attacks in London using ricin and other poisons, to 10 years in prison, court officials said. Mohamed Meguerba, 37, who trained in Afghanistan, skipped bail in Britain in 2002 and is thought to have been smuggled back to Algeria by Islamic rebels, was convicted of setting up and belonging to a foreign terrorist organisation. "The court sentenced Meguerba to 10 years in jail," one official said. The ricin plot focused attention on a group of young Algerians based in Europe who became involved with al Qaeda in the late 1990s and have been linked to plots in Britain, France, Italy, Germany and the United States. Algeria has been fighting Islamist militancy for more than a decade and has repeatedly criticised Western governments, and Britain in particular, for failing to listen to its warnings and for harbouring extremists. Meguerba, a native of Algiers, was held by British police in late 2002 but was freed on bail. He skipped bail and returned to Algeria, where he was arrested in December 2002. Information he gave Algerian interrogators was crucial to the capture and conviction in Britain of another Algerian, Kamel Bourgass, and made him a central figure in Britain's biggest terrorism case of recent years. According to UK prosecutors, Meguerba told the interrogators that he, Bourgass and others had been making poison in a flat in North London, keeping it in a skin cream jar and planning to smear it on door handles. British police, tipped off by the Algerian authorities, raided the apartment and found poison recipes and instructions on making explosives, triggering a nationwide sweep and more than 100 arrests -- including that of Bourgass. Bourgass, accused of being the leader of the group, was found guilty in April this year of plotting to "use poisons or explosives to cause disruption, injury or fear" and jailed for 17 years. But eight other North Africans alleged to be fellow conspirators were cleared of any role in the plot. A year earlier, Bourgass had been convicted in a separate trial of murdering a British detective taking part in the raid in which he was arrested. Mergueba, like many other Algerians who left the country in the 1990s amid political and social instability, moved around Europe before attending London's Finsbury Park mosque, known to attract radical young Muslims, a security expert familiar with his Algerian dossier said. Mergueba, who was able to travel and fit in easily, speaking fluent French, English and Arabic, is believed to have married an Irish woman in 1997. In 2000 he went to Afghanistan and trained at the El-Farouk camp run by Osama bin Laden, the expert said. Thousands of men, including many North Africans, went to such training camps run by bin Laden and the Taliban regime. Family members in Algiers said on Wednesday they knew nothing about his life abroad. "We know nothing about him because he told us nothing about his life," Meguerba's sister, who declined to give her full name, told Reuters outside the court house. Another family member said Meguerba was not a particularly strict Muslim as a young man, and used to drink alcohol. He has not been charged with any crimes in Britain, which is not expected to seek his extradition. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |