A German court sentenced a Lebanese man to life imprisonment for plotting two failed suitcase-bomb attacks on German trains in 2006 that the authorities say could have led to dozens of deaths for regional commuters. The Higher Regional Court in Dusseldorf convicted the defendant, identified as Youssef Mohamad E. H. D., of attempted murder in an undetermined number of cases, court spokesman Ulrich Egger said in an interview from Dusseldorf today. The trial began almost a year ago in the western German city.
Suitcases containing propane gas canisters and detonators were discovered on two local trains departing from Cologne’s main station on July 31, 2006. Germany’s federal prosecutor has said the bombings, which were only prevented by technical failures, could have caused damage on the scale of the terrorist attacks in Madrid in 2004 or London in 2005. “This constituted a very serious danger,” Deputy Interior Minister August Hanning, said in an interview on German news broadcaster N24. “It was only a relatively small technical error that prevented a catastrophe.”
Youssef Mohamad told the court last week that he never intended to kill innocent people and knew the bombs wouldnÂ’t go off, Deutsche Presse-Agentur said. Another man involved with planning the attack, Jihad H., was sentenced by a Lebanese court last year to 12 years in prison. The two worked together in April 2006 to plan the attacks as an act of revenge against the publication of caricatures of the prophet Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September 2005, the prosecutor has said. Youssef Mohamad was arrested Aug. 19, 2006, in the northern German city of Kiel. |