Former Abu-Nidal terrorist faces murder trial in Germany

Mar 31, 2008, 13:31 GMT

Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany - A former member of the Palestinian Abu-Nidal terrorist group goes on trial in Germany on Tuesday for murdering a Lebanese car dealer and his wife for their money.

A news magazine reported Monday that police also suspect Bassam A of murdering two German women in 1991 to silence them and doing a contract killing on a German businessman in 2001.

The trial, set to continue until September in Frankfurt an der Oder near the Polish border, involves the greed-driven November 2000 shooting of the car dealer and his German-born wife in a Berlin suburb.

The alleged killer and two Lebanese-born accomplices, who go on trial with him, obtained hundreds of thousands of Deutschmarks from the dead man, police say. The trio later moved to Sweden to live.

The magazine Focus said a male cousin of the Palestinian told police A had boasted of the other three murders, which police had never solved.

In 1991, a 45-year-old German nurse from the northern town of Bremerhaven was killed, along with a 40-year-old German woman from Bremen. A said he had killed them after telling a nurse to bomb a US base in Garlstedt, Germany. He killed her when she refused.

The other woman was killed the same night because she was aware of the plot, he allegedly said.

In the 2001 contract killing, a German builder was shot dead at the door of his home by A posing as a courier, Focus claimed.