Beirut court jails man for 12 years in German bomb plot

 

A Beirut court on Tuesday sentenced a Lebanese man to 12 years in prison over a botched plot to bomb commuter trains in Germany, as another Lebanese faced trial in Duesseldorf in the same case. Jihad Hamad, 23, was convicted of attempted murder in connection with the failed July 2006 attack on two trains in Germany which he said was revenge for cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed published in European newspapers, a judicial source said.

 

Three other Lebanese defendants in their early 20s – Khaled al-Hajj Dib, Ayman Hawwa, and Khalil Boubou – were acquitted.

 

A fifth defendant, Yusef Mohammad al-Hajj Dib, 23, also went on trial on Tuesday in the western German city of Duesseldorf, charged with attempted murder in the same plot. He could face a life sentence.

 

As Dib”s trial began under high security, a criminal court chaired by Judge Helene Iskander sentenced him in

absentia to the death penalty, before commuting it to life behind bars.

 

A sixth suspect in the case, Saddam al-Hajj Dib, a brother of Yusef Mohammed al-Hajj Dib, was killed in May in clashes between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al-Islam militants at the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp near of Tripoli.

 

German prosecutors say plot masterminds Yusef Mohammed al-Hajj  Dib and Jihad Hamad placed suitcases containing homemade explosives  on two trains in the western city of Cologne in July last year. The devices failed to explode because of faulty detonators,  averting an almost certain bloodbath in what German officials said  was a bid to copy deadly train blasts in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005.

 

The suspects were picked up using security camera footage taken at Cologne”s railway station, which showed two men placing heavy suitcases.

 

“A detonation would have in both cases led to a significant wave of pressure; lighter fluid in the “bomb trolleys” could have set off a fireball,” said the charge sheet issued in Germany.

 

German prosecutors say that in addition to the Prophet  caricatures, the suspects were also driven by anger over the killing  of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader, by a June 2006 US air strike in Iraq.

A charge of belonging to a terrorist organization that was originally considered against him was dropped because investigators, in line with German law, needed a third suspect to make the charge stick. However German prosecutors are investigating the possible involvement of another of Dib”s brothers, Khaled Mohammad Ibrahim, who is now believed to be in Sweden.

 

Dib testified that Ibrahim, who is confined to a wheelchair, had taken care of him after his arrival in in Germany in September 2004 “like a father”.

 

“He took very good care of me, doing everything for me from the smallest things to the biggest favors,” he told the court in Arabic.

 

Defense attorney Bernd Rosenkranz acknowledged that his client was one of the men seen on camera but said he was “religious but not a fanatic.”

 

He said the defense strategy would be to raise doubts about whether the two men ever intended to blow up trains, considering the amateurish construction of the bombs.

 

“Perhaps they just wanted to send a message,” he said.

 

But federal prosecutor Horst Salzmann said the plot “was absolutely serious.”

 

The six suspects in the case returned to Lebanon after the failed plot.

 

However, Yusef Mohammed al-Hajj Dib returned to Germany in August last year to resume his studies and days later was arrested at a railway station in the northern city of Kiel after a tip-off by a Lebanese security service. Prosecutors believe he was on his way to Sweden to join his brother.

 

Hamad had turned himself in to police in Tripoli in August 2006, and the three defendants who were acquitted in Lebanon on Tuesday were arrested a month later. All four had faced up to 15 years in jail.

 

The verdicts issued in Beirut capped a trial that started in April.