Train suitcase bomb trial starts in Germany shortly (1st Lead)

Dec 18, 2007, 10:52 GMT

Dusseldorf - The trial of a Lebanese student charged with the attempted bombing of German trains in July 2006 got under way in Dusseldorf Tuesday after he was sentenced to 21 years in absentia by a Beirut court for the same offence.

The bombs, had they detonated, could have caused carnage on the scale seen in Madrid in March 2004 and in London in July the following year.

The Beirut court Tuesday sentenced Youssef Mohamad al-Haj Dibb, 23, to death in absentia, commuting the sentence to an effective 21 years.

It sentenced his accomplice Jihad Hamad, 22, to 12 years, handing down sentences seen as harsh in the Lebanese capital. Hamad's lawyer indicated he would appeal.

In Dusseldorf, long queues formed outside the high-security court, delaying the start of proceedings, as police conducted body searches of those entering, in some cases insisting they remove their shoes.

Haj Dibb faces charges of multiple attempted murder, but not of terrorist conspiracy, as German law requires at least three conspirators.

He was expected only to identify himself Tuesday and to answer the charges only next year in proceedings that are expected to recapitulate much of the evidence heard in Beirut and likely to run for months.

Haj Dibb appeared calm as he entered the heavily guarded courtroom and greeted his legal team.

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, 2006.

They took trains in opposite directions, left the bombs on board and left the country. Neither bomb exploded.

German police say the two assembled the devices wrongly.

The defence argues that Haj Dibb 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.

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.

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.

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.