Al-Qaida suspects extradited to US

Germany has extradited two Yemenis to the United States on charges that they supported the al-Qaida terrorist network, prosecutors in Frankfurt said.

The two men, Sheikh Ali Hassan al-Moayad and his alleged assistant, Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed, were picked up on Sunday by American officials and flown out of the Rhine-Main Air Base near Frankfurt by the US Air Force, said a spokeswoman for Frankfurt prosecutors.

The move came after the Federal Constitutional Court ruled on Thursday that the two could expect a fair trial in the United States, rejecting the complaints they filed against lower-court decisions backing extradition.

The two were arrested on January 10 in a sting operation at a Frankfurt hotel, where they had expected to meet a wealthy American Muslim.

Officials there have said Al-Moayyed, a leading member of the Yemen’s Islamic-oriented Reform party, left his country for medical treatment in Germany 10 days before his arrest.

US and German authorities say they learned in December 2001 that al-Moayad was involved in supplying money and militants for Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network as well as to the Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas.

According to papers from a Brooklyn federal court supporting the extradition request al-Moayad told an FBI informant that he supplied money, recruits and weapons to bin Laden in the years before the September 11, 2001 attacks.

If convicted in the United States, al-Moayad would face up to 60 years in prison, US prosecutors have said. Zayed, who faces a conspiracy charge, could be jailed for up to 30 years.

Washington has given Germany assurances that the suspects will not face a military court or any other special post-September 11 tribunal, or be confined in an internment camp.