Jihad Hamad's lawyer says he will appeal if sentence is high

Dec 17, 2007, 17:03 GMT

Beirut - A lawyer for Jihad Hamad, a suspect in an attempt to blow up two trains in Germany in July 2006, said Monday that he would appeal any 'harsh' verdict passed on his client.

Fawaz Zakaria, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the verdict would be announced on Tuesday.

'There will not be a court session, the verdict will be handed to me through the legal department of the justice palace,' Zakaria told dpa.

'If the sentence is between three to five years, I will not appeal, but if it's higher, I will appeal,' he said.

The lawyer stressed that Hamad was a victim and that he had 'never belonged to any fundamentalist movement, but Youssef al Hajj-Dib has brainwashed him for one week and told him to help in this act,' Zakariyeh said.

Hamad, who is currently imprisoned in Lebanon with three other suspects while al-Hajj Dib is in a prison in Germany, had planted two suitcases filled with bombs on the trains.

Had there not been a mistake in the bombs' construction, German investigators said the planned explosions near Hamm and Koblenz would have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people and put it on a much larger scale than the terrorist attacks on London subways and buses in July 2005.

Hamad's parents who live in al-Kobbe, a poor area in the northern port city of Tripoli, expressed anxiety Monday and prayed that 'God will help their son with a reduced sentence.'

Hamad had turned up at his parents' house in Tripoli shortly after the attempted bombings on July 31, 2006. Jihad, who had been taking German language classes for six months in Germany, explained his sudden appearance in Tripoli by saying that he was worried about his parents because of the 33-day war on Lebanon in July last year.

Youssef al-Hajj Dib, 21, was arrested at Kiel's main railway station in northern Germany. Al-Hajj Dib had apparently shared an apartment in Cologne with Jihad just weeks before the attempted bombings.

According to the lawyer, 'Youssef told Jihad that two German newspapers had printed the (prophet) Mohammad caricatures and that if they did nothing ... they will go to hell.'

The publication of the 12 cartoons depicting Mohammad in a Danish newspaper in 2006, and their reproduction in mostly European media sparked Muslim ire worldwide and triggered a wave of violent protests.