6 Convicted in Paris in U.S. Embassy Plot

A French court Tuesday convicted six Islamic militants of conspiring to bomb the U.S. Embassy here, culminating a lengthy and labyrinthine case involving a European terror network linked to key Al Qaeda leaders.

The three-judge panel sentenced the French Algerian ringleader of the Paris-based cell, Djamel Beghal, to the maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for terrorist conspiracy. His lieutenant, computer expert Kamel Daoudi, received a nine-year sentence. Two suspects were sentenced to six-year terms and the others received three- and one-year terms.

The verdict was a victory for Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere, the dean of France’s anti-terrorism magistrates, who opened the investigation of the embassy plot Sept. 10, 2001, amid increasing concern here about the threat of Islamic terrorists.

Al Qaeda’s attacks the next day on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon sent European investigators into high gear. Police in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain quickly rounded up suspects in the embassy plot, aborting longtime surveillance operations in hope of preventing other attacks.

The investigation traced the alarming rise of a homegrown European network. The members were mostly in their 20s and 30s and ranged from working-class North African immigrants to middle-class converts from an Alpine village.

The militants’ collective odyssey led from radical mosques in Britain, where they imbibed the teachings of cleric Abu Qatada, to training camps in Afghanistan, where the embassy plot allegedly was blessed by the now-imprisoned Abu Zubeida, an accused Al Qaeda operations chief.

During the trial last month, prosecutors provided 45,000 pages of wiretap transcripts, surveillance reports and other evidence alleging that the group set up compartmentalized structures in France, Belgium and the Netherlands to attack the embassy here. The suspect identified as the would-be suicide bomber, Nizar Trabelsi, was convicted in 2003 of plotting to attack an air base in Belgium. A Dutch appeals court convicted another accomplice last year.

The six Paris defendants pleaded not guilty while describing themselves as Muslim fundamentalists. Daoudi, 30, admitted using false documents to travel to Afghanistan, then under Taliban control.

Beghal, 39, challenged a central piece of evidence: his confession to police in the United Arab Emirates. Acting on a tip from U.S. intelligence, authorities in the Emirates arrested him in July 2001 as he was en route from Afghanistan to Morocco to collect funds for the plot, prosecutors said. Beghal claimed he was tortured into confessing.

“Djamel Beghal’s confession was wrung out of him and was never confirmed by the facts,” his attorney, Jean-Alain Michel, said after the verdict Tuesday. He and other lawyers said they planned to appeal.

The lawyers also questioned the role of would-be bomber Trabelsi, a Tunisian ex-soccer player, because he had confessed to planning to bomb a U.S. military base in Belgium, not the embassy in Paris. Some U.S. and European investigators say Trabelsi concocted the story of an attack in Belgium to avoid the tougher French justice system.

In the end, the judges in Paris were satisfied that the prosecution proved the existence of a conspiracy. France’s anti-terrorism laws are stern and sweeping, especially compared with laws in countries such as the Netherlands that often make convictions difficult unless accused terrorists are caught committing a violent act.

The case represents a model of international cooperation among anti-terrorism agencies that revealed the intricate workings of globalized extremism.

Beghal was a respected founding veteran of Islamic networks in Europe. He first came to attention of French intelligence agents in 1997 because of suspected ties to Algerian groups involved in bombings here in the mid-1990s. Despite his strenuous denials, prosecutors accused him of adhering to Takfir wal Hijra, a secretive Islamic movement that has influenced many militants and ex-convicts, including radicalized gangsters charged in last year’s train bombings in Madrid.

The green-eyed, broad-shouldered Beghal was born in Algeria and raised in a working-class suburb of Paris. Married to a Frenchwoman, he befriended well-known militants. He met London clerics such as Abu Qatada, who is under house arrest in Britain and accused by European police of being a top ideologue in Europe. Beghal also grew close to Seifallah ben Hassine, whom European and Tunisian anti-terrorism officials accuse of being a leader of Tunisians affiliated with Al Qaeda. Ben Hassine was imprisoned in Tunisia after being captured in Turkey in 2003, French anti-terrorism officials said.

In addition, the trial revealed that Beghal’s crew had contacts with a Tunisian suicide bomber who in 2001 had killed Afghan militia leader Ahmed Shah Masoud, head of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance; Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber” convicted of trying to blow up a Paris-to-Miami flight in 2001; and several Moroccans jailed in the Madrid train bombings.

The cell included Beghal’s brother-in-law and a former co-worker, both convicted here Tuesday, and two brothers from a village in the French Alps who converted to Islam.

The defendants said they were merely a group of friends and relatives bound by faith.

On the witness stand, Beghal jousted with the judges, engaged in historical digressions and returned to an insistent refrain: Despite a tangle of international connections, he claimed he was not a terrorist ringleader or even a recruiter who molded militants.

“I am a practicing Muslim, I am on a quest to learn about this religion which is my primary passion,” Beghal said. “But I have never influenced anyone to convert to Islam. I am approached often with questions and I am not stingy with my acquaintances, but I have never tried to influence someone on the path to conversion, never, never.”