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
That works for me.
I recommend that everyone takes the time, trouble and expense to visit Auschwitz at some point. It is just outside the lovely city of Krakow, which is a good place to wash away the pain of what you see.
It is horrifying - the whole "Arbeit Macht Frei" on the gates, the piles of luggage, glasses, human hair - take a tour through the camp, see the ovens where the bodies were roasted - and if you look among the tall grass - the flecks of human bone are still there on the ground.
The Germans are in no position to lecture anyone. They should be grateful we didn't destroy them completely. We had every moral right to do so.
Regards, Ivan
More than a moral right, it was an obligation. I'm half German and suspect in another 20 years by the time the Germans get through re-writing history, we will have attacked them unprovoked.
"In the end, it came down to revenge. Revenge for wives, children, siblings, parents, friends, and complete strangers; revenge for murders and rapes; revenge for villages destroyed and fields salted; and, eventually, revenge just for the sheer joy of it. The Germans call 1945 'The Beating Down.' The best argument for Russians being basically kind-hearted and decent as a culture is that they didn't kill every single German in the Soviet Occupation Zone after the war."
Memo to Germany: We know what you did last century.
Now cut the Stierscheiße and give us the evidence.
If you ever see a picture of a young blond girl being hanged while her boyfriend looks on, that's the face of Teutonic compassion.
But Ivan, the problem is not only with Germany but also with the entire European Union, including Britain.
As the article state: Outlawing the death penalty is a requirement for membership of the 15-member European Union.
Up until 1945, the History of Western Europe was an orgy of inter-European warfare as well as dosmestic bloodshed on the streets, the gallows, the guillotines, the concentration camp gas chambers and the firing squad execution walls.
After the Pax Americana was imposed by the United States of America on Western Europe, the Western Europeans have used this prolonged period of internal Peace, not seen since the Pax Romana, to become self-righteous Peaceniks.
They are now bent on lecturing the Americans, who have assumed the dirty but necessary military burden of defending Europe from the rest of the cold, cruel world and keeping the world's sea lanes open for Europe, about the evils of anything short of Utopian Peace.
No proof, just a hunch.
So this justifies a full-scale invasion, and conversion to an American state, of this once-sovereign nation.
Oh, I get it. Har har har har! You're comparing Deutschland to Iraq. Clever, very clever. Well, not actually clever. Silly. Yes, silly. That's the word I was looking for. Sorry about the mix-up.
Better future for ya.
I don't recall us refusing you a prisoner on that basis. You are making an assumption that because we are members of the EU (something that America encouraged Britain to be part of as far back as JFK), that we are like the Continentals. That is patently false.
Regards, Ivan
LOL! My paranoia is showing.
I don't know about going into dishwasher repair. Doesn't sound too exciting. How about door-to-door gynecology?
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