Posted on 04/16/2002 7:00:29 AM PDT by Cachelot
(15:20) Terror suspect tells German court: 'You're all Jews.'
| By Melissa Eddy, The Associated Press | April, 16 2002 |
FRANKFURT, Germany - The trial of five Algerian men charged with plotting to blow up a French holiday market opened with a flourish today when a defendant disrupted the proceedings and was removed from court.
While the other defendants shielded their faces from a TV camera allowed to tape the opening five minutes, 31-year-old defendant Lamine Maroni, speaking in Arabic, recited Koranic verses, swore and urged the others not to testify.
He was warned not to continue, but went on in English and German, motioning to the court. "You're all Jews. I don't need them. I don't need the court. My God is my defender."
As he was led out, Maroni said "You want to kill me, baby, don't you?"
The five men are accused of planning an attack on New Year's Eve 2000 in Strasbourg, France, with the intent to murder, belonging to a terrorist organization, falsifying documents and weapons violations. Federal prosecutors say the Algerians have already entered their pleas, but no details have been released for security reasons.
If found guilty, they could face up to 10 years in prison.
After Maroni was removed, the court read from the 150-page indictment. The defendants were also expected to publicly enter please.
Prosecutors expect the trial, which could last at least a year, will establish the extend and goals of al-Qaida's European network.
Responding to fears of reprisals by members of Osama bin Laden's worldwide terror network, authorities have enacted some of the tightest security measures for a trial ever at the district court in downtown Frankfurt - including surveillance cameras, extra screening and roadblocks around the courthouse controlled by armed police officers.
The defendants attempted unsuccessfully to block the TV cameras, and took the precaution of wearing masks over their eyes for the drive from prison near Darmstadt, 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Frankfurt, to the court. The defendants traveled in separate unmarked cars with police officers wearing protective gear, escorted by police cars.
Information from other European law enforcement agencies, including cell phone conversations picked up by Italian authorities, led to the arrests of four suspects in December 2000 and a fifth the following April.
Transcripts of those cell phone conversations indicate that the suspects were in contact with other suspected terrorists operating near Milan last October.
The report by Italian anti-terrorist police identified the suspects by their full names of Aeurobi Beandalis, 26, Fouhad Sabour, 37, Salim Boukari, 30, Lamine Maroni, 31, and Samir Karimou, 33.
However, Italian authorities said only Fouhad Sabour's identity had been verified and the others were possibly aliases.
According to Cornelius Nestler, a law professor in Cologne, such transcripts could be crucial in helping the prosecution prove that the defendants belonged to a terrorist organization.
Under German law, prosecutors must either present testimony from another member of the organization, or evidence of specific plans to carry out a crime, either from files, correspondence or tapped phone conversations.
"If they don't have anything of this nature and none of the accused say anything about it, then it will be difficult to prove they were a terrorist organization," Nestler said.
In this case, only one of the defendants, Beandalis, has agreed to testify, and his lawyer, Achim Groepper, has declined to specify what he will say.
The German indictment said the men had trained in Afghanistan. The Italian document goes further, saying the camps were run by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
It was at the camps where the suspects are believed to have received training in constructing homemade explosives, extensive material for which was confiscated during the arrest, the Italian report said.
During a search of two Frankfurt apartments at the time of the initial arrests, authorities seized 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of a chemical that can be used to manufacture explosives, as well as homemade detonators, a hand grenade, submachine guns, dismantled rifles, revolvers and ammunition.
The Italian report said they also found detailed handwritten instructions for making and use of the explosives and instructions on the use of toxic substances in lethal doses.
Further investigations also turned up information indicating that Boukari and Sabour had rented an apartment in the southwestern German city of Baden-Baden, 60 kilometers (40 miles) from Strasbourg, for days surrounding the planned attack.
A videotape showing Christmas market in front of the cathedral in Strasbourg and a busy square in the center of town also found in the Baden-Baden searches led authorities to establish what they believe to be the intended target.
Elsewhere, German prosecutors said today they will likely close an investigation against a Sudanese man who came under suspicion because of architectural plans of the Israeli and Japanese embassy found in his Hamburg home.
The plans of the embassies turned out not to be evidence of any planned crime involving the 33-year-old, said Ruediger Bagger, chief prosecutor in this northern city.
"The papers were in a desk that the man had bought at an auction," he said.
Police searched the apartment of the man, identified earlier as Abdelwahab M., at the end of December after receiving a tip that it contained explosives and that the man could be linked to the Hamburg terrorist cell that helped carry out the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
The man studied at the same Hamburg technical college as two of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
No explosives were discovered, but authorities found the plans of the embassies in the capital Berlin and decided to question the man further.
Bagger didn't say when the investigation might be formally closed.
He means by that the blood-thirsty "god" of murder and death--whom he no doubt refers to as "Allah" but would recognize as "Satan" if he faced the truth? If this poor S.O.B. is counting on "it" to save him, he is lost beyond hope. Poor bastard! Pray for him.
The irony of this is almost funny. It is amazing how ignorant these scum are.
These lunatics need to be sequestered permanently--like Richard Speck or Jeffrey Dahmer or any other homicidal maniac. Ten years? And then they'll be turned loose?
Ten years seems to be the max. They'll probably be given half of that, which with good behaviour and official timidity will become 16 months to two years. Or they'll simply be let off on probation or something.
Religion sucks.
-Eric Hoffer
...whereupon the judge, deeply offended and speaking on behalf of all present, formally ordered him to "take that back".
This shmutz knows he's playing to a European crowd. Sigh.
Imal
Somehow, that's the last thing I'd say to a crowd of Germans.
Mr. Maroni was excluded from the proceedings for making statements in Arabic which blended Koran citations with fatalistic appeals to have his head cut off. Following anti-Semitic statements -- "everyone here is a Jew" -- and an international expression of displeasure, "It's a fuck," the defendant was removed from the courtroom, calling out "Allah akhbar" (God is great).
The federal prosecutor has accused the 31-year-old Mr. Maroni and four other defendants of membership in a terrorist organization. Lawyers Achim Groepper and Edgar Liebrucks declared on behalf of their client, the 26-year-old defendant Aeurobui Beandali, that he objected to his prejudgment in the media, the extensive security measures, and the brief presence of a camera team in the courtroom.
The court was initially against allowing cameras in the courtroom, but a decision by the Federal Constitutional Court mandated that a television crew be allowed to film the scene. The defense lawyers and the court had agreed in advance upon how the defendants were to conduct themselves in front of the camera. When the time came at noon, the men, who are believed to have close ties to Osama bin Laden's Qaida terrorist network, turned their faces away or covered them. Defendant Fouhad Sabour enveloped himself completely in a black shawl.
Almost 100 riot police, some armed with machine guns, closed off a wide area surrounding the court complex in downtown Frankfurt. Concrete blocks were set up in front of the court entrance to reduce the danger of an attack with explosives. Police searched vehicles for explosives in a parking lot across the street.
Reading out a summary of the 150-page indictment, district lawyer Volker Brinkmann alleged that the five men had allied with others at the end of 2000 with the goal of procuring weapons, ammunition and explosives, saying that the group had planned attacks designed to kill people. If found guilty, they could face up to 10 years in prison.
The prosecution alleged that the defendants had been trained in Mr. bin Laden's Qaida camps in Afghanistan. According to the federal prosecutor's office, four of the defendants planned a bomb attack in the French city of Strasbourg at the end of 2000.
The suspects were arrested on Dec. 26, 2000, in an apartment in Frankfurt's Eckenheim district, where numerous firearms and a large amount of chemicals used to build bombs were confiscated.
Apr. 16
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| © Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited. |
"WE ARE ALL JEWS."
Me too.
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