German court jails four men in al Qaeda cell for planning attack

By Matthias Inverardi

DUESSELDORF Germany (Reuters) - A German court convicted four men on Thursday of being members of or supporting al Qaeda and planning a potentially lethal attack on German soil, handing them jail sentences of up to nine years.

The group, dubbed the "Duesseldorf cell" by German media, was arrested in 2011 in the western cities of Duesseldorf and Bochum, days before Osama bin Laden was killed.

During a two-year long trial, prosecutors said the men, acting under direct orders from al Qaeda, planned to detonate a cluster bomb in a crowd of people followed by a second explosion once emergency services had arrived to treat the victims.

Moroccan Abdeladim El-K, in his 30s, was the leader of the cell and is the highest-ranking member of al Qaeda to go on trial in Germany. The court in Duesseldorf sentenced him to nine years in prison.

In her ruling, judge Barbara Havliza cited a letter to Bin Laden from senior al Qaeda figure Younis al-Mauretani, since captured in Pakistan, which mentioned the German cell.

The letter, found at the house where bin Laden was killed, described El K as an "intelligent and sensible brother" who had received "instructions".

Prosecutors said he traveled to an al Qaeda training camp in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area in 2010 where he was taught how to make explosives and use guns.

Back in Germany, he recruited the other three suspects - German Halil S., German-Iranian Amid C. and German-Moroccan Jamil S. They were handed prison sentences of between 4-1/2 and seven years. The men are all in their 20s and 30s.