Alleged bomb plotters on trial in France

Ten suspected terrorists, including a man prosecutors claim is a lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, stand trial in Paris today for a foiled plot to bomb the famed Christmas market in the eastern French city of Strasbourg on New Year’s Eve 2000.

Four of the men allegedly trained in the use of arms and explosives in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan in the 1990s. They and their six alleged accomplices are accused of being members of the so-called “Frankfurt group” - named for the German city where the bomb plot was hatched.

German police arrested four men, all Algerians, in Frankfurt in December 2000. A map of Strasbourg and a home-made videotape of the brightly lit Christmas market and Strasbourg’s cathedral were found.

“These are the enemies of God – they will burn in hell,” Salim Boukari, one of the Algerians, said on the tape.

The four were convicted in Germany in March 2003 and sentenced to 10 to 12 years in prison. The German court said the group had planned to blow up pressure cookers packed with explosives, a technique they learned in Afghan camps.

The Algerians’ 10 alleged co-plotters standing trial in Paris face up to 10 years imprisonment if convicted of ”criminal association with a terrorist enterprise".

The four top suspects are Slimane Khalfaoui, 29, Yacine Akhnouche, 30, Rabah Kadri, 37 and Mohamed Bensakria, 37 – considered one of bin Laden’s lieutenants in Europe. Bensakria was extradited from Spain in the summer of 2001.

Kadri was arrested in London in 2002 and remains in a British prison. He will be tried in absentia.

The six other Algerian or French-Algerian suspects are mostly alleged to have given logistical support to the plot, notably by supplying false papers to other members of the group.

The trial is expected to last three months.

Akhnouche denies participating in the plot but told investigators that he met Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in the United States as part of the Sept. 11, 2001 conspiracy.