News from Europe today hit a little close to home: terrorists were sentenced to prison terms for plotting an attack against the city of Strasbourg, where my lovely and talented wife was a student in the 1970s. We've always dreamed of going back to visit together. Glad to see these ratfinks were caught in time.
Four Algerians said to have trained in camps financed by al Qaeda have been jailed for plotting a bomb attack. A court in Frankfurt found them guilty of planning the attack in the French city of Strasbourg in December 2000. The judge said the group had been encouraged to carry out an attack by the London-based Islamist group Abu Doha.
Prosecutors said the Algerians had trained in camps in Afghanistan financed by al Qaeda and claimed they had contacts with similar extremists in Britain and Italy and received logistic support from Britain.
"The accused wanted to hit the nerve centre of a free, Western, civilised society," Judge Karlheinz Zeiher told the court, saying the men had trained in Afghanistan so they could carry out attacks as part of a "Holy War" on the West. He said the men consciously chose Christian symbols like the Christmas market and the Strasbourg cathedral as their targets and wanted to punish France for backing the Algerian government.
Posted by Alan at March 10, 2003 08:31 PM