Dusseldorf - Queues formed Tuesday outside a high-security
court in the German city of Dusseldorf as a Lebanese student went on
trial for attempting to detonate bombs on passenger trains that would
have caused devastation comparable with similar attacks in Madrid and
London.
There were long delays for those entering the court, as police and
court officials conducted searches, ordering some to remove their
shoes and other items of clothing.
In Beirut, an alleged co-conspirator was scheduled to be
sentenced Tuesday at the end of a lengthy trial for the same offence.
The two men allegedly built the bombs using designs they found on
the internet, hid them in suitcases and went together to Cologne
station in the west of Germany on July 31 last year.
They took trains in opposite directions, left the bombs on board
and left the country. Neither bomb exploded, and police say the two
Lebanese assembled the devices wrongly.
The defence argues that Youssef Mohamad al-H, 23, made a
deliberate mistake. This is contested by the prosecution, which
argues that the bombs' construction points to an intent to cause
death and serious injury through burns.
Al-H is accused of multiple attempted murders, but not of
terrorist conspiracy, as German law requires at least three
conspirators.
Earlier allegations that a shadowy Islamist terrorist group
commissioned the attack have not shown up in the indictment.
Prosecutors accept it is possible the pair were fanatical freelancers
inspired by Islamist ideology.
Al-H is expected neither to admit to the charges nor to testify.
His alleged accomplice, Jihad Hamad, 22, was tried in Beirut along
with three others because there is no treaty under which Lebanon
could extradite him to Germany. He has appealed for mercy from the
court and a mild sentence.
Ottmar Breidling, one of Germany's leading trial judges
dealing with Islamist conspiracies, is presiding at the German trial,
expected to continue in a fortress-like court in the city of
Dusseldorf until well into 2008.
The Beirut findings will have little influence on the German
court.
Prosecutors will lead evidence the two young Lebanese being
educated in Germany were angry at the publication early in 2006 in
Danish and German newspapers of cartoons mocking the Prophet
Mohammed.
Commuter trains were bombed by Islamist extremists in Madrid in
March 2004, claiming 191 lives. The London attacks in July the next
year caused 52 deaths, apart from the four suicide bombers.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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