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'We were tricked by al-Qaeda'
10/07/2006 21:12 - (SA)
Paris - Two of six former Guantanamo detainees standing trial in Paris on terror charges told the court on Monday they were tricked into travelling to an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.
Mourad Benchellali, 25, told the judge an elder brother, who sent him to the camp near Kandahar in July 2001, had led him astray.
Menad Benchellali was recently convicted in a separate French terrorism trial.
"When I arrived at the camp, I quickly became angry with my brother."
"I found myself in a world he'd told me nothing about," said the young man who was captured by US troops as an "unlawful combatant" and sent to the notorious base at Guantanamo, Cuba, in 2001.
"I met very dangerous people, I did terrible things.
"He took me into a world that was not my own," said Benchellali, who like the five other defendants in the trial denies any links to terrorism.
Wrong place at the wrong time
Defence lawyers say the young men travelled to Afghanistan to discover the country - or in one case to practice shooting - and were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
From the Afghan city of Kandahar, Benchellali said that he and fellow suspect Nizar Sassi, 26, were bundled onto a bus without realising where they were headed.
"We were in the home of some Algerians in Kandahar, with young people from lots of different countries. They were cheerful, singing, and we followed the general movement," Benchellali said.
"We thought it might be a shuttle bus for the town centre. ...But we drove all night, only to find ourselves in a camp lost in the middle of the desert.
"We didn't like it. We were disappointed right away.
"We asked to leave, but the rule is once you're in you can only leave if you fall sick," Benchellali said.
A sense of adventure
His co-defendant Sassi, who comes from the same suburb of Lyon in southeast France, insisted he joined in the trip to Afghanistan out of a sense of adventure, to practice shooting, but has no ties to Islamic extremism.
"It's true I like weapons. ...It's a cultural thing," Sassi told the judge.
"In my neighbourhood, in Venissieux, the guy with a gun gets respect.
"And Afghanistan was scary: if you could say you'd been there, everyone would respect you.
"I'd sold my car, I'd brought a lot of money with me to buy bullets. ...But we couldn't even buy any. In total I fired just 15 shots," he said.
"Me too," chimed in Benchellali. "I only fired 15 bullets. And I hated it.
"The rest was just Arabic lessons. I didn't understand a word. I just felt guilty about being there."
Benchellali, Sassi and four other Frenchmen released from the United States base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in 2004 and 2005 are on trial accused of associating with terrorists while in Afghanistan between March 2000 and August 2001.
Imad Achab Kanouni, 29, Khaled Ben Mustapha, 34, Redouane Khalid, 38, Brahim Yadel, 36, Benchellali and Sassi all face charges of "criminal conspiracy in relation to a terrorist enterprise".
Some of them admit travelling to Afghanistan with the help of a London-based network and even staying in camps linked to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden - but strongly deny fighting US forces or planning attacks in Europe.
The trial is set to close on Wednesday.
- AFP
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