A French state attorney called Tuesday for one-year prison sentences against five of six former Guantanamo detainees standing trial in Paris on terrorism charges.
Summing up for the prosecution after a week of hearings, Sonya Djemni-Wagner urged guilty verdicts against the five, but said the court should take into account their "abnormal detention" at the US military base in Cuba. She refused to recommend a sentence againt a sixth defendant on the grounds that the evidence against him was too light.
Mourad Benchellali, 25, Nizar Sassi, 26, Khaled Ben Mustapha, 34, Redouane Khalid, 38, Brahim Yadel, 36, and Imad Achab Kanouni, 29, were held for up to three years at Guantanamo Bay after their capture in Afghanistan in 2001. Released to France in 2004 and 2005, they went on trial last week for "criminal conspiracy in relation to a terrorist enterprise."
Only one of the accused - Yadel - remains in detention, but all spent periods of pre-trial imprisonment and could therefore hope to avoid jail if the court follows the prosecutor's recommendation. A verdict is due in several weeks after the trial concludes Wednesday. "I do not believe they should return to jail," Djemni-Wagner told the court.
Some of the six admitted to staying in Afghan camps linked to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but all denied fighting US forces or planning attacks in Europe. Djemni-Wagner said disapproval of the US detention facility at Guantanamo was not an argument for acquitting the men, who she said had knowingly travelled to Afghanistan using an underground network based in London.
"They had links with the same Islamist activists, they knew they were going out via terrorist networks. They could not be ignorant of the fact that one day something would be asked of them in return," she said.
"In Afghanistan they went from reception houses to training camps along the jihad route. These are places totally involved in al Qaeda's terrorist activities. "They knowingly joined a structure whose final goal was terrorist action. Those who pass that way feed the al Qaeda machine, and you should convict them for that reason," she said.
Djemni-Wagner separated the sixth man - Kanouni - from the others because there was no evidence he had visited paramilitary training camps. On Monday, Benchellali told the court that he was duped into travelling to Afghanistan by his elder brother Menad, who was recently convicted in a separate French terrorism trial.
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