Posted on 07/21/2003 12:54:46 PM PDT by knighthawk
BERLIN (Reuters) - A German court said Monday it had approved the extradition to the United States of two Yemeni citizens suspected of links to the al Qaeda network who were arrested in Frankfurt in January on a U.S. request.
The men are Yemeni Muslim cleric Sheikh Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Mouyad and his assistant, Mohammed Moshen Yahya Zayed. U.S. authorities accuse the two of being al Qaeda supporters, but have not linked them directly with the September 11, 2001 hijacked airliner attacks on the United States.
U.S. officials accuse Sheikh Mohammed, a preacher at Al Ihsan Mosque, one of the main mosques in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, of being a significant fund-raiser for al Qaeda but not a financial official for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
The Frankfurt court said in a statement the two men were suspected of membership of a "terrorist organization" and said one of the two was suspected of helping finance al Qaeda and the extremist wing of the Palestinian group Hamas, contributing to festive send-offs for suicide bombers.
Both men belong to Yemen's Islamic opposition Islah party, whose members have denounced the arrests and said the pair had no connection to al Qaeda. Sheikh Mohammed's son has said the cleric went to Germany for medical treatment and denied he had any links to terrorist groups.
The Frankfurt court said the United States had guaranteed that the men would not be tried by a military or any other extraordinary court and said the German government had to make a final decision on extradition.
German law does not allow the extradition of suspects if they could face the death penalty in the state they are extradited to, but the court approved extradition in this case.
"The international community must be able to use extraordinary, cross-border investigative measures to fight serious crimes of globally organized terrorist organizations," the court statement said.
The court said the accused could appeal against the decision on the basis of new information or appeal to Germany's highest court, the Constitutional Court.
In November, Berlin only agreed to cooperate in the U.S. trial of French national Zacarias Moussaoui, charged over the September 11 attacks, after Washington assured Germany their evidence would not be used to obtain the death penalty.
Yemen, the ancestral home of bin Laden, has cooperated with the U.S.-led war on Islamic extremism and is trying to rid itself of its image in the West of being a haven for Muslim militants. It had asked for the two men to be extradited back to Yemen.
Germany was an important launchpad for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington blamed on al Qaeda. Three of the four hijackers lived in the northern port city of Hamburg in the 1990s.
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