Lebanon sentences two over German train bomb plot

BEIRUT/DUESSELDORF, Germany (Reuters) - A Beirut court sentenced a Lebanese man to life in prison and another to 12 years on Tuesday for their roles in a failed attempt to detonate bombs on German trains in 2006.

Jihad Hamad and Youssef al-Haj Deeb were both convicted of attempted mass murder, while three others were acquitted.

Lebanon has no extradition treaty with Germany, but its judicial system allows it to try Lebanese suspected of committing a crime abroad so both men were tried there, even though Haj Deeb was absent, having been arrested in Germany.

Haj Deeb, who received the life sentence, went on trial in the city of Duesseldorf on Tuesday under the German proceedings against him.

German federal prosecutors say Hamad, 22, and Haj Deeb, 23, boarded two trains in Cologne, headed for Koblenz and Dortmund, in July 2006 with suitcases containing tanks of propane gas and crude detonators.

The bombs failed to go off due to a technical fault, but German prosecutors say they would have caused a significant number of deaths had they exploded.

The plot shocked Germany, which, unlike European countries such as Britain and Spain, has not experienced a major militant attack in recent years.

At the start of the trial in Duesseldorf, prosecutor Horst Salzmann accused Haj Deeb of planning the attacks together with Hamad in April 2006 in a bid to "kill an indeterminate number of people".

German prosecutors argue, and Hamad has admitted, that the plot was designed as an act of revenge for cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad that were first published in a Danish newspaper in 2005 and sparked protests across the Muslim world.

European publications including a German newspaper reprinted the cartoons as an affirmation of the right to free speech.

POOR UPBRINGING

Dressed in a beige, hooded sweatshirt and sporting a beard and shoulder-length black hair, Haj Deeb told the German court about growing up poor in a conservative district of Tripoli, a northern Lebanese city that has long been a breeding ground for Sunni Islamist movements, including militant groups.

"I went to the mosque every now and then but did not pray on a regular basis," he said softly in Arabic, describing himself as tolerant in religious matters.

Haj Deeb's lawyer Bernd Rosenkranz, speaking to reporters on the margins of the high-security trial, said his client had deliberately built the bombs so they would not explode.

"I would not call him a dangerous terrorist," he said.

Hamad, who turned himself in to Lebanese authorities in August 2006, has confessed to his role in the plot but also says it was meant to create fear rather than kill.

"We were expecting the punishment to be much lighter," his lawyer Fawwaz Zakariya said after the verdict in Beirut, adding that he would see whether there were grounds for an appeal.

Haj Deeb was seized by police in the north German city of Kiel, where he studied engineering, after he was identified from security camera footage.

The German trial is expected to last until mid-2008. Lebanese courts usually give higher sentences to suspects convicted in absentia, perhaps explaining the discrepancy between Haj Deeb and Hamad's sentences.

(Writing by Tom Perry in Beirut and Noah Barkin in Berlin; Editing by Kevin Liffey)