Man Cleared in Masoud Slaying Faces Extradition

An Egyptian man accused of conspiring to assassinate an Afghan Northern Alliance leader was freed Thursday after a terrorist charge against him was dismissed--but he was immediately rearrested on an extradition warrant from the United States.

Yasser Serri, who lives in London, was arrested in October in connection with the killing of Ahmed Shah Masoud, a veteran guerrilla commander who was mortally wounded in Afghanistan by two suicide bombers Sept. 9.

Prosecutors accused Serri of using his London-based group, the Islamic Observation Center, to give fake journalist credentials to two men who detonated a bomb hidden in their camera while they interviewed the opposition leader in his northern Afghanistan headquarters.

In an interview with an Arabic newspaper before his arrest, Serri said he wrote the letters but thought the men were legitimate journalists. At London’s Old Bailey court, Judge Peter Beaumont said the evidence suggested that Serri’s letters had been used by the suicide bombers. But he said the original letters had been used as a template and then forged, “thus using the applicant as an innocent fall guy.”

Serri was one of four people charged in New York last month with helping an imprisoned Muslim cleric, Omar Abdel Rahman, spread terrorist messages from the prison where he is serving a life sentence for plotting to blow up tunnels, the FBI’s Manhattan headquarters and the United Nations. Abdel Rahman is said to be the leader of an Al Qaeda-linked organization called the Islamic Group.

A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said a U.S. warrant alleged that Serri provided money for Abdel Rahman “knowing or having reasonable cause to suspect that the money would or may be used for the purpose of terrorism” in the U.S.

He was scheduled to appear in court today.