Germany jails train bomb plotter

[John Ashworth]

Germany jails train bomb plotter
Al Jazeera
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
16:10 Mecca time, 13:10 GMT


A Lebanese man has been sentenced to life in jail for a failed plot to bomb a German commuter train in 2006.

A regional superior court in the city of Dusseldorf on Tuesday convicted 24-year-old Youssef Mohammed el-Hajj Dib of multiple counts of attempted murder and attempting to cause an explosion.

Prosecutors said el-Hajj Dib and an accomplice, Jihad Hamad, boarded two trains in Cologne, one headed for Koblenz, one for Dortmund, in July 2006 with suitcases containing tanks of propane gas and crude detonators.

The bombs failed to detonate, but prosecutors said the planned attacks in western Germany could have caused up to 75 casualties.

Ottmar Breidling, the presiding judge, said el-Hajj Dib was guilty of a "thoroughly terrorist act" and dismissed the defendant's claim that he had only deposited a mock-up of a bomb packed in a suitcase in a rail carriage to scare the German public.

"This was a crime for which only the highest penalty under the law can apply," Breidling said.

A life sentence in Germany generally amounts to 15 years in prison.

Warning

Duscha Gmel, the state prosecutor, told the court: "Germany was never closer to an Islamist attack."

El-Hajj Dib told the court last week that he had no intention of killing anyone.

"If I had really wanted the attack, I could have finished building the explosive charge correctly," he said.

He said his actions were meant as a warning after cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed were published in a Danish newspaper in 2005, and reprinted by other European publications.

The cartoons sparked protests across the world.

Both Dib and Hamad, who is currently serving a 12-year sentence in Beirut over the plot, had been living as students in Germany.