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| Europe |
| Germany still trying to extradite "Caliph of Cologne" |
| 2003-09-16 |
| EFL--Read the rest at the link. Interior Minister Schily is taking terrorism and militant Islam more seriously than Schröder or Fischer... German Interior Minister Otto Schily was in Ankara on Tuesday to seek ways to extradite a militant Islamist from Germany to Turkey but said there were still obstacles to handing him over to Turkish officials. "Some questions still need to be solved," Schily told reporters after a meeting with his Turkish counterpart Abdulkadir Aksu. A court in Cologne last month ruled against a German government request to extradite Kaplan saying that it feared he would not receive a fair trial. Turkey wants to try Metin Kaplan, the leader of the banned Kalifatstaat (Caliphate State) on charges of high treason over a 1998 plot to fly a light plane full of explosives into the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the secular Turkish state. Kaplan has served a four-year prison term in Germany for the murder of a rival Islamist leader. He was released in May but must report regularly to police. |
| Posted by:seafarious |
| #3 I wonder waht the penalty will be for trying to fly a plane into the tomb of the Ataturk. I think the German government can rest assured that capital punishment will not be administrered. That would be far to humane. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-9-16 4:39:31 PM |
| #2 The Turkish national served four years in a German prison for inciting the murder of a rival who was killed. Kaplan was the leader of the Islamic organization "Caliphate State." After another "Caliph" established himself in Berlin in 1996, Kaplan told his organization's members the man's "head should be cut off." German police promptly arrested Kaplan after the rival, named Sofu, was shot in front of his family in 1999. "This town's only big enough for one Caliph!" |
| Posted by: Steve 2003-9-16 2:23:47 PM |
| #1 Four years in prison for murder? Are you kidding me? |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2003-9-16 1:19:39 PM |