Posted on 08/31/2002 1:38:51 PM PDT by Jean S
Germany Refuses U.S. Evidence Against Sept. 11 Suspect Without Assurance He Won't Be Executed, Minister Says
BERLIN (AP) - Germany has told the United States it will withhold evidence against Sept. 11 conspiracy defendant Zacarias Moussaoui unless it receives assurances that the material won't be used to secure a death penalty against him, Germany's justice minister said in remarks released Saturday.
Investigators suspect Moussaoui, who is awaiting trial in Virginia on charges of conspiracy to commit terrorism and murder federal employees, was training to become the pilot of one of the airliners hijacked for the attacks when he was arrested.
German prosecutors say he received money for flight school fees from a member of the terrorist group based in the northern city of Hamburg. But the government insists it can't bend laws forbidding the extradition of suspects to countries with the death penalty or supplying evidence that could incriminate someone facing execution.
In an interview with the Der Spiegel news weekly, Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin said Germany would provide documents on Moussaoui to the United States on condition that they "may not be used for a death sentence or an execution."
A letter explaining the long-standing German position had been sent to U.S. authorities in reply to a request for information about Moussaoui, she said.
"At the moment, the United States are examining our answer and will then get back to us," she said.
Outlawing the death penalty is a requirement for membership of the 15-member European Union.
Daeubler-Gmelin insisted the exchange was not putting more pressure on relations between the Germany and the United States already strained by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's criticism of U.S. threats to attack Iraq.
Cooperation between justice authorities in the two countries is "good and trustful," Daeubler-Gmelin said. "After Sept. 11, one shouldn't try to soften that."
Moussaoui, 34, was arrested last summer at a flight school in Minnesota and became the first person to be charged directly in connection with the attacks. He is being held in custody in pending the opening of his trial in January.
U.S. law enforcement officials have said Moussaoui received two money transfers from Ramzi Binalshibh, who roomed with suicide pilot Mohamed Atta in Hamburg and wanted to take part in the hijackings, but was unable to secure a visa.
German prosecutors this week announced that they had charged another suspect, Mounir El Motassadeq, with belonging to a terror group and 3,000 counts of being an accessory to murder for his alleged support for the Hamburg terror cell.
AP-ES-08-31-02 1607EDT
All I have seen(at a distance) is the imposition of an unelected gov't which sees to it that grocers are punished and murderers not.
You are mixing up two separate topics:
1. The desireability of Unity.
2. The style of Government such a Union chooses to adopt for itself.
Since the Fall of the Roman Empire, Western Europe has been at constant war with itself. During the 20th Century, two such wars of Western European disunion left hundreds of thousands of American boys dead on Western European battlefields from Normandy to Germany and from Belgium to Sicily.
American Union is good because it is now inconceivable to have Virginian boys and New York boys slaughtering each other on the outskirts of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
European Union is good because it is now inconceivable to have American, British and French boys on one side and German boys on the other side slaughtering each other on outskirts of Bastogne, Belgium.
Whether or not the now united Western Europeans impose an unelected government on themselves which sees to it that grocers are punished and murderers are not does not concern me. I don't live there and do not intend to.
If the Western Europeans want that style of Government, that is solely their business.
On the other hand, if the Western Europeans resume their wars of disunity, such wars have a nasty way of eventually becoming America's business.
I hope that adequately addresses your question.
Question, Have they ever extraditioned a suspect in a capital case before?
"Pressure" would be if GWB were to declare the US-German extradition treaty to be in abeyance.
Not that it's likely, but it makes a nice daydream ;)
The self-righteousness of the Germans is disgusting. We do have troops in Europe. Maybe we should pull the troops out of Bosnia & Kosovo and reoccupy Germany. The only reason they have any sovereignity is we gave it to them. We totally overran them.
Kyoto, the ICC, support for Saddam and for Arafat's homicide bombers, opposition to rightful executions ... one cannot help having the impression that we're facing a series of intentional provocations whose objective is to build enmity between Americans and members of the European pseudo-nation. Combine this with the Socialistic, authoritarian, overcentralized, ultrabureaucratic, gun-grabbing internal policies, and it becomes obvious that we are facing a tyranny waiting for its tyrant--the seeds of a Fourth Reich.
One woman called in and said she thought we shouldn't put Moussaoui to death, but put him away the rest of his life "so he can sit & think about what he did".
ALLO???? All locking him up for life is going to do is give the Islamic recruits growing in the prisons here someone to look up to. Aside from that, he's NOT going to sit & mope over what he DID...He's going to sit & PLAN what he'll CONTINUE TO DO if he ever gets back out!!!
(a.) Sit back and giggle our asses off?
(b.) Be good sports and at least send them weenies & marshmallows?
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