On Sunday in my German news roundup, I mentioned Abdelghani Mzoudi, a member of the Hamburg cell which helped plot 9/11. The German federal court of appeals upheld his acquittal and today he left for Moroccco.
According to the German-language Tagesschau, he left today from Hannover and arrived in Agadir, Morocco. He then made his way to Marrakech. The German authorities had given him two weeks to leave Germany, which would be up tomorrow. It remains to be seen whether the Moroccan government will try him or whether he’ll be handed over to the US (or kidnapped) for detention and interrogation. Given the fact that he was friends with 9/11 hijackers and lived with them, he’s hardly an innocent exchange student in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In 1999, Mzoudi lived in the Hamburg Cell, an apartment owned by Atta, where many of the organizers of the September 11, 2001 attacks met and planned their future. His specific role in the attacks has not been determined, but he does not seem to have attempted to enter the United States at any time.
This brings up an interesting point, namely the differene between American and German policy towards terrorism. America, engaged in the War on Terror, considers them prisoners taken during wartime and not criminals. Germany considers them criminal. In this case, it seems to have been quite clear Mzoudi was involved in terrorist activities, the question was exactly what. Any western justice system would have to acquit him based on the tenet of innocent until proven guilty yet are we dealing with run of the mill criminals or not? Considering terrorists have declared war on us, and that they belong to no army, don’t wear a uniform and don’t represent a country, they are neither common criminals nor soldiers worthy of legal protection. What shall we do with them?
Authors like Michael Scheuer says that we are fighting a global Islamist insurgency?
The definition of war is: a state of widespread conflict between states, organisations, or relatively large groups of people, which is characterised by the use of violent, physical force between combatants or upon civiliansSeems applicable? It seems to be, the entire question of whether we are at war or not is still not clear to some within the US and abroad. Reader?
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Comments to this entry
mark safranski
June 21, 2005
11:57 pm
Unless acquitted or granted POW status that would mean the firing squad for some and for others a sentence at hard labor in a military prison like Leavenworth.
Dan
June 22, 2005
12:29 am
A problem with that logic is where on the continuum of violence do you draw the line? Would Civil Rights sit-in workers, who violented other citizens basic human rights, be considered terrorists because their acts were part of a widespread ideological attack on states?
mark safranski
June 22, 2005
2:15 am
No, not unless they were also members of an armed group. The Hague Convention deals with the context of war and not ideological conflict in peacetime expressed through civil disobedience tactics.
For example under my reasoning, it would have been legal for the British government to try members of Sinn Fein, not because they advocated union with the Republic but because they were the political wing of the IRA, an armed group engaged in a terror war with Britain. Fortunately for Gerry Adams, the Brits saw things in a fashionably modern way.
Grendel
June 22, 2005
2:07 pm
Dan
June 23, 2005
2:57 am
http://www.icomos.org/hague/hague.convention.html
Likewise, in a modern terror war is there a meaningful distinction between wartime and peacetime?