Euroweenie
Posted on 03/19/2002 11:15:09 AM PST by kattracks
PARIS (Reuters) - Paris has warned Washington it could review its cooperation with the Sept. 11 probe if the United States sought the death penalty against a French national charged with aiding the people behind the attacks, French rights groups said Tuesday.
They said Justice Minister Marylise Lebranchu told them in a letter that she had instructed her officials to contact the U.S. Justice Department to voice concern that information gleaned in France could put Zacarias Moussaoui on death row.
The 33-year-old is charged with conspiring with Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network in connection with the hijacked airliner attacks in New York and Washington, which left more than 3,000 people dead last September.
After reaching an agreement with the French government, U.S. prosecutor Robert Spencer attempted to interview Moussaoui's relatives in France this week.
"France will take steps to alter the agreement stipulating that any information transmitted to the U.S. judicial authorities ... cannot be used by prosecutors pressing for a death penalty," rights groups, including Amnesty International, quoted Lebranchu's March 15 letter as saying.
Moussaoui was the first man charged over the attacks in which hijackers seized four commercial airliners, crashed two into the World Trade Center in New York and one into the Pentagon. The fourth plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania.
Rights groups say Spencer, who questioned Moussaoui's brother Monday, would use the information to argue the suspect should be put to death. U.S. prosecutors are due to decide by March 29 if they will seek the death penalty, the rights groups said.
Moussaoui's brother refused to answer Spencer's questions while his mother failed to turn up for an interview. But the U.S. official was thought to be seeking to interview others connected with the family.
Four of the six charges for which a not guilty plea has been entered on Moussaoui's behalf carry a possible death penalty.
Lebranchu has already said France, which scrapped capital punishment in 1981, would not accept the death penalty for Moussaoui.
Euroweenie
Absolutely. May I predict that the world is evolving into two power blocks - China, Arab States and France on one side, everyone else on the other.
Moussaoui was early defended by Mrs. Carlos the Jackal--I did not make that up.
This is the country that compromised our mission to capture Radovan Karadzic if memory serves.
A nation of smelly whores doing whatever nasty piece of work flashes a roll.
France has provided the corrupt judges keeping American Green Beret veteran Ted Maher wrongly imprisoned 836 days without trial on an extorted false confession.
Alright, we will surrender their Mousey-All-The-Vowels. Load him on a pallet shrink-wrapped to a thermobaric one-ton truffle and slide it down the ramp of a C-130 in the crisp spring air over Le Tower Eiffel. Paris in the spring at 4,000 degrees Kelvin.
I'd surrender to Britney :-)
Oh, I think that's still too weak. I mean, how many people will see such Celebrities (their kids already buy their CD's). What we really need is offensive chain stores with franchises all over Franch. They thought MacDonald's was bad. Put a big greasy Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits right in the middle of Montmartre, and in every town center across the length and breadth of France. Put a WalMart in every picturesque village. Run Les Folies Bergere out of business by putting a Hooters across the street.
They've accused us of being cultural terrorist for years. Now let's show 'em the real thing.
Oh, I forgot, the Canadians killed them at the beginning of the war with Canada...
Gees. Why don't they say it outright: "we support terrorist jurisdiction over France and the US instead of US jurisdiction"
Man, these people better be told they are in big trouble for interfering with US jurisdiction and the war on terror.
I hate the french they are not worse then bloodsucking scum
randystone
"Go and boil your bottoms, sons of a silly person!"
"I fart in your general direction!"
"Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries!"
"Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time."
Who was it that invented the guillotine?
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