| Submit your comments on this article |
| Europe |
| ’Caliph of Cologne’ fights extradition |
| 2003-05-02 |
| Lawyers for a controversial Islamic radical announced plans Wednesday to fight his extradition from Germany to Turkey to stand trial on an array of terrorism charges. Attorneys launched the appeal on behalf of Metin Kaplan, the Islamist known as the "Caliph of Cologne", who is currently in pre-extradition custody in Germany. They said he would face "intolerable human-rights abuses" were he to be extradited to Turkey. Cue truncheons. Groom mustachios. Turkish authorities accuse Kaplan of bombing the Ataturk Museum and ordering the occupation of a mosque. Until March, Kaplan was in Dusseldorf jail serving a four-year sentence for incitement to murder. Since then he has been in pre-extradition detention. The German government dropped its original opposition to extraditing him based on the risk that he faced a penalty, death, that is banned in Germany. Turkey's parliament has since passed a resolution to eliminate the death penalty. Last year a German court affirmed the 2001 ban on Kaplan's German organization because it opposes democracy and does not recognize German law. Reports say that despite doctrinal differences, Kaplan has had links with terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. Turkey would like him to have even more in common with Binny... Turkish prosecutors want to try Kaplan for treason, as he seeks the overthrow of the Turkish state and its replacement by a caliphate or religious government with himself as caliph. "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed was his prophet, and I am Kaplan's jail term is for calling in a sermon for a man to be put to death. The victim was duly murdered in May 1997. The two killers have never been caught. |
| Posted by:seafarious |