A French-Algerian accused of being the computer wizard for an Islamist group suspected of plotting to blow up the U.S. embassy in Paris denied in court on Tuesday that his stock of fundamentalist literature made him a radical.
| Guess it all depends on your definition of "radical," doesn't it? |
Kamel Daoudi, on trial with five other men suspected of links to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, said he had texts by bin Laden's right-hand man Ayman al-Zawahiri and other radicals on his computer hard disk because he was curious about them. He also denied receiving military training in Afghanistan.
"When someone reads Das Kapital, he is not necessarily a Marxist ... or a terrorist," Daoudi, 30, told the court, adding he sometimes even read extreme right-wing political magazines. "I'm a very curious person."
| "Yeah. I'd never seen nobody's hands lopped off." |
The prosecution says Daoudi, who has a degree in mechanical engineering, was the computer and logistics expert for the group and kept contact with al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
| "No, no! All I did was call out for pizza a few times!" |
The suspected group leader Djamel Beghal told the court on Monday he had no links to extremist groups.
| "Who? Me? Certainly not!" |
The six men face prison sentences of up to 10 years if found guilty of conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism. Two others are on trial charged with illegally residing in France. In September 2002, Daoudi wrote to a French television channel from his prison cell to justify the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. But he denied being personally involved in any planned attacks.
Beghal, 39, was extradited to France from the United Arab Emirates in October 2001 after telling police there he had helped plan a foiled suicide attack on the U.S. embassy just off the Champs Elysees in central Paris. The prosecution says Daoudi visited Afghanistan for military training in 2001 but he said the visit was innocent. "Afghanistan was something of a mythical country, a bit like our Promised Land, and I wanted to see what was going on there," he told the court. "I was in a period of much questioning, like Candide in Voltaire's philosophical tale."
| Paging Professor Pangloss! He just wanted to see what life was like in the Best of All Possible Worlds™... |
According to the prosecution, Daoudi fled to Britain after Beghal was arrested but was detained there and extradited to France in September 2001. British police found the radical texts on his computer after seizing it. Investigators say the suicide bombing was to have been carried out by a former professional soccer player, Tunisian-born Nizar ben Abdelaziz Trabelsi. Trabelsi was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a Brussels court in 2003 for plotting to blow up a NATO military base in Belgium for al Qaeda. Judge Philippe Vandingenen suspended the hearing briefly after a dispute with Daoudi's lawyer Frederic Bellanger, who accused him of trying the defendant for his opinions. "I am not judging you on the basis of ideas but of facts," Vandingenen told Daoudi when he resumed the session.
| "Of course, if it was his opinion that he wanted to blow up the Champs Elysees, I guess we can try him on that, too!" |
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