France Jails Six Over Plot to Blow Up U.S. Embassy
Reuters
Tue Mar 15, 2005 11:33 AM ET
By Gerard Bon
PARIS (Reuters) - A French court sentenced a French-Algerian man to 10 years in prison Tuesday for plotting a suicide attack on the U.S. embassy in Paris and jailed five accomplices for one to nine years.
Djamel Beghal, 39, received the toughest term possible under French law as the ringleader of the foiled plot in 2001. Kamel Daoudi, 30, a computer expert, received a 9-year sentence after being accused of running logistics and communications.
The six men, all of Algerian origin, are suspected of having links to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden but denied the charges of criminal conspiracy designed to commit an act of terrorism.
Two other members of the group were jailed for 6 years, another for 3 years and the last for 1 year. Investigators found that the proposed suicide bomber was a Tunisian man, now in jail in Belgium.
The six stood impassively behind bulletproof glass in the Paris courtroom as the judge read out the verdict and sentences one by one. None of them spoke or showed any sign of emotion as the judge said: "The court declares you guilty."
Lawyers for Beghal and Daoudi said they would appeal against their clients' sentences.
"Djamel Beghal's confession was wrung out of him and was never confirmed by the facts," said Jean-Alain Michel, a lawyer representing Beghal.
Beghal was extradited to France from the United Arab Emirates in late September 2001 after he told police in the Gulf state that he had helped plan a foiled suicide attack on the U.S. embassy just off the Champs Elysees in central Paris.
He later retracted his statement, saying he had confessed under "methodical torture."
Daoudi, who once worked in an Internet cafe in a Paris suburb, also denied involvement in any attack plot. But he wrote to a French television channel from his prison cell in September 2002 to justify the Sept. 11 attacks.
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