- BERLIN (IslamOnline and News
Agencies) - Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin said Germany will not
bow to U.S. demands to turn over documents for the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui,
the French-Moroccan facing a death sentence in the United States over the
attacks on Washington D.C. and New York on September 11, in an interview
released Saturday.
-
- The minister, whose comments appear in the news magazine
Der Spiegel's Monday edition, said the United States must understand "that
our documents must not be used for a death sentence or an execution."
-
- Capital punishment is banned in the European Union, and
the German constitution prohibits the transfer of any documents for a defendant
facing possible capital punishment.
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- Moussaoui, 34, arrested in the United States last year,
was the first person to be indicted worldwide over the September 11 attacks.
He goes on trial in January, after a judge ruled for an extension over
fear that Moussaoui would not receive a fair trial if tried in September.
-
- Der Spiegel said Germany has turned up two money transfer
forms from a Frankfurt bank that reportedly establish a link between Moussaoui
and a cell of Osama bin Laden's al-Qa,eda network in the northern city
of Hamburg, which at one point was the home of the Egyptian Mohammed Atta
- alleged mastermind of the attacks - and several of his fellow hijackers.
-
- Both forms requested money transfers to Moussaoui's account
in the United States, where he was enrolled in a flight training school.
-
- Fingerprints and handwriting analyses showed the forms
were filled out by a Yemen national, Ramzi Binalshibh, who is being sought
by an international arrest warrant and suspected of helping the Hamburg
group plan the attacks, the magazine said.
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- The U.S. has repeatedly requested the originals of the
documents for Moussaoui's trial, which begins January 6.
-
- Germany is holding the only other person to be indicted
in the September 11 attacks, a 28-year-old Moroccan, Mounir El Motassadeq,
who was officially charged last Wednesday with helping members of the Hamburg
cell, accusations that he has fiercely denied.
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- http://www.islamonline.net/english/News/2002-08/31/article12.shtml
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