Western Resistance

« UK: Welfare To Suspected Islamists' Households Stopped | | Understanding Muhammad: Muhammad and Khadija »

July 4, 2006

France: Ex-Guantanamo Muslims On Trial

News from Agence France Presse via Expatica, from the Telegraph and Le Figaro tells how six French nationals who were released from detainment at Guantanamo have gone on trial yesterday in Paris. They are on trial in the 16th chamber of the correctional tribunal of Paris,accused of undergoing terrorist combat training at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan.

They are Imad Achab Kanouni, 29, Khaled Ben Mustapha, 34, Redouane Khalid, 38, Brahim Yadel, 36, Mourad Benchellali, 25, and Nizar Sassi, 26. All six are charged with "associating with criminals in relation to a terrorist enterprise". Benchellali and Nizar Sassi (pictured) are further charged with counterfeiting.

The men were repatriated from Cuba in July 2004 and March 2005, and only Brahim Yadel is detained in custody. The other five were set free by French authorities, and a seventh individual has been exonerated of all charges.

The six are said to have been recruited after 1998 by Rachid Boukhalfa, also known as Abou Doha, whom we mentioned earlier. Abou Doha was arrested at Heathrow airport in February 2001 and has subsequently fought extradition requests from the United States, who want him in connection with a plan to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on New Year's Eve, 1999. He has supposed links with Al Qaeda operatives in Milan, and he is also linked to plots to attack Strasbourg Christmas Market and Strasbourg Cathedral. Doha remains in detention in the UK.

The six are linked to the Stasbourg plots, it is alleged, and also to the plot which led to a suicide attack on Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Afghan "Northern Alliance" on 9 September, 2001, which was carried out by two Muslims who had resided in Belgium.

The six men went to Afghanistan between March and August in 2001, and are said to have atended a jihadist camp near Kandahar, where prosecutors say there were taught to use light arms and explosives.

In an opening statement, the prosecution stated: "Their arrival in Afghanistan was indeed part of a terrorist plan leading them naturally to become mujahadeen in the service of Al-Qaeda."

The defense are expected to argue that the six went to Afghanistan to absorb its culture and to learn Arabic. One of the accused claims he wanted to find out for himself what the Taliban were like, as he did not trust the Western media portrayals. Following the US invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, they were taken to Guantanamo.

Sassi and Benchellalii had been captured on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Benchellali has told the New York Times, in an interview published last month: "I cannot describe in just a few lines the suffering and the torture; but the worst aspect of being at the (Guantanamo) camp was the despair, the feeling that whatever you say, it will never make a difference."

On Sunday, Khaled Ben Mustapha told the Journal du Dimanche that the experience at Guantanamo had broken him, but said he had not fought the US in Afghanistan. He said of this trial: "They want to make me pay for what? The fact of having been kept prisoner in Guantanamo?"

On the first day of the trial, it was said that the men had wanted to go to see a country at war, for some adventure. Imad Achhab Kanouni had been one of the first to decide to go, as he had become bored with his studies in biology, which he was taking in Nice on the mediterranean coast. Aged barely 20 years he set off to Germany and then became a member of the Bangladesh mosque at Frankfurt, renowned for its militant preachers. From those at the mosque he heard of Afghanistan as a place where one could live out one's faith and take part in the movement, eager to join the ranks of the jihadists from Kosovo.

Jean-Claude Kross, the tribunal's president, asked why, in 1996 Kanouni had been a normal Muslim, but in 1999 had grown to espouse the idea of dying for a cause. Kanouni claimed that it was a period of "youthfulness".

Khalid, trained in accountancy, had abandoned his studies in 1987 to do his national military service in Algeria, and after meeting a worshipper from the Sevran mosque, he became religiously motivated.

Mustapha was born in France, and was not a committed or fanatical Muslim at the end of the nineties, a follower of "Islam of the slippers" rather than a radical.

Nizar Sassi left Venisseux for London, and went to Islamabad, Peshawar, Djallalabad, and Kabul before he got to Kandahar. Then aged 22 he was already skilled in weapons handling. He had been approached in a Lyon mosque in May 2001 by Mened Benshellali, brother of Mourad Benchellali, who gave him the idea of being a jihad combatant.

The trial is expected to continue until July 12.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at July 4, 2006 8:03 AM

Comments

Post a comment