By Paul de Bendern
ALGIERS (Reuters) - The trial of the accused Algerian co-plotter in an al Qaeda plan to launch chemical strikes in Britain was postponed in the capital Algiers on Wednesday.
Algerian authorities accuse Mohamed Meguerba, 37, of belonging to foreign and Algerian terrorist organisations.
Britain says he was the key co-plotter in a conspiracy to launch attacks with ricin and other poisons in London. Last week Britain announced it had convicted another Algerian, Kamel Bourgass, of the plot and of killing a policeman during a raid.
Meguerba, an Algiers native who fought in Afghanistan, skipped bail in Britain in 2002 and is suspected of being smuggled into Algeria by Islamic rebels. He also faces charges of using fake documents and other offences.
Advertisement starts
Advertisement ends
"Like usual accusations (in Algeria), Meguerba is accused of belonging to a terrorist group," defence lawyer Zhour Chenouf told Reuters. She gave no further details about her client.
Meguerba became the central figure in Britain’s biggest terrorism case since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States after he was arrested in Algeria in December 2002.
According to UK prosecutors, he told interrogators in Algeria that he, Bourgass and others were making poison in a flat in North London, keeping it in a skin cream jar and planning to smear it on door handles.
British police found his fingerprints and poison recipes in the flat, triggering a nationwide sweep and more than 100 arrests. The plot was mentioned by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in his speech to the United Nations when making the case for invading Iraq in 2003.
The Algiers court judge said Meguerba’s trial would be postponed to a later session at the request of the defence. He gave no date for the trial to resume.
Seven other Algerians, some suspected of belonging to an Algerian Islamic rebel group, were also on trial but two failed to appear in court on Wednesday.
Meguerba, who appeared in court with short hair, a moustache and wearing a black sweater, smiled throughout the brief proceedings.
Algeria, fighting Islamic extremism for more than a decade, has in the past repeatedly criticised Western governments for failing to listen to its warnings and for harbouring extremists, particularly in Britain.
FAMILY SURPRISE
The ricin plot has turned attention to a group of young Europe-based Algerians who linked up with al Qaeda in the late 1990s and have been linked to plots in Britain, France, Italy, Germany and the United States over the past several years.
Like many other Algerians who left the country in the 1990s amid political and social instability, Meguerba moved around Europe before attending London’s Finsbury Park Mosque, according to a security expert familiar with his Algerian dossier.
In 2000, like several other Algerians, he trained at an Osama bin Laden-run camp in Afghanistan, said the expert.
"We know nothing on him because he told us nothing about his life," Meguerba’s sister, who declined to give her full name, told Reuters outside the court house. Another family member said he was not a particularly strict Muslim as a young man, and used to drink alcohol and play with his poodle.
