Trying Al Qaeda: US vs. Europe

Mr. Bush has said he favors military tribunals in certain cases, in which conventional trials might reveal intelligence-gathering methods. US judicial authorities have not yet requested the extradition of any of the suspects in Spanish jails, but US officials are pressing the Spanish government to allow US investigators to interrogate the suspects.

The attorney general will address a similar case in talks today with German authorities. German police have arrested Mounir al Motassadeq, whom they say had power of attorney over a bank account in the name of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

One European suspect in the attacks, Frenchman Zacarias Moussaoui, does not stand to benefit from European laws since he was arrested in the US in August on immigration charges. Believed to have been the 20th intended hijacker, Mr. Moussaoui was indicted this week on six counts, four of which could carry the death penalty.

"If the Americans condemn him to death, there will be a direct conflict with France" - supposedly one of Washington's leading allies in the war against terrorism - predicts Barthelemy Courmont, an analyst at the Paris-based Institute for International and Strategic Relations.

AS FOR bin Laden, falling into European hands would not necessarily save him: The writ of the European human rights convention does not run in Afghanistan. If British troops capture him there, Prime Minister Tony Blair has said, they would have no compunction in handing him over to the Americans.

Top Pentagon officials have made clear that they want broad control over the handling of any Al Qaeda members captured in Afghanistan. "From the top to the bottom, they're bad folks," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said this week of the largely Arab, Chechen, and Pakistani fighters. "They ought to be stopped and they ought to be imprisoned."

The United States intends first to interrogate any detained Al Qaeda members for intelligence purposes. Next, US officials suggest that they would decide, case by case, whether the Al Qaeda members would face trial in Afghanistan, the US, or their countries of origin. The decisions would depend on whether the United States was confident the home countries shared the US intent to stop and punish terrorists.

Finally, the United States seeks to take charge of any senior Al Qaeda leaders, thought in Afghanistan to have numbered a few dozen. "Those are people that we obviously hope to get control over and have a much - a very deep involvement - as to what their ultimate disposition might be," Rumsfeld said.

Toward this end, Rumsfeld said that allied forces from European countries that object to the death penalty would not be placed in a position to take control over Al Qaeda leaders or would be expected to hand them over immediately to US forces.

"We just don't want [European sensitivities] to get in our way with respect to the people who fit in these senior-level categories."

Special correspondent Ann Scott Tyson in Washington and Sara B. Miller in Madrid contributed to this report.

"We had notification since the previous Thursday that the event would take place that day."

"We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all."

"Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. That is all that we had hoped for."

"After a while, they announced that another plane had hit the World Trade Center. The brothers who heard the news were overjoyed by it."

Excerpts from video tape released yesterday by the Pentagon. Translation by the US government.

Page: 1 | 2