Lebanese man jailed for life in German train bomb plot

Duesseldorf: A Lebanese man accused of planting suitcase bombs on two German trains with an accomplice was convicted on Tuesday of attempted murder and sentenced to life in prison for the failed 2006 attack.

Youssef Mohammed Al Hajj Dib, 24, was one of two main suspects accused of planting the bombs on two regional trains at Cologne's main station in July 2006.

The bombs' triggers went off, but the explosives did not detonate and no one was harmed. Al Hajj Dib was arrested the following month in the northern German port city of Kiel; another suspect, Jihad Hamad, fled to his native Lebanon and was arrested there.

"That there was not a devastating bloodbath with many dead is thanks only to the fact that the defendant and his accomplice, Jihad Hamad, made a mistake in building the explosive devices," presiding judge Ottmar Breidling told the court.

Al Hajj Dib said Hamad planned the attacks as revenge after some German newspapers reprinted caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), first published in a Danish newspaper in 2005. He admitted taking part in the plot but said Hamad oversaw it.

However, he has insisted that the bombs were deliberately faulty. The defense had called for his acquittal, and said it would appeal.

"I swear by God almighty that I had no intention to kill anyone," Al Hajj Dib told the court last week. "If I had really wanted the attack, I could have finished building the explosive charge correctly."

However, judges pointed to testimony by Hamad at his trial in Lebanon that the pair had wanted to kill. Hamad was sentenced to 12 years in prison last December by a Lebanese court.

Prosecutor Duscha Gmel said during the trial that "Germany has never been closer to an Islamist attack than in this case."
Al Hajj Dib listened to Tuesday's verdict without visible reaction.

Judge Breidling said Al Hajj Dib had a "radical Islamic attitude" and counted among his role models Al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaida in Iraq.

Breidling said Al Hajj Dib had "brought such guilt on himself that the only fair answer in law can be the maximum sentence."

Evidence in the case included surveillance footage allegedly showing the two suspects wheeling suitcases containing the devices into the train station.