Bin Laden bodyguard stands trial in Germany

A Jordanian man who said he served as Osama bin Laden's bodyguard went on trial in a German court yesterday charged with planning attacks in German cities.

Federal prosecutors accuse the 26-year-old Jordanian citizen of belonging to Al Tawhid, a militant Sunni Palestinian group that the United States says has links to al Qaeda, and helping to plot a grenade attack on a Jewish target in Germany.

Prosecutors said members of the group had also been planning to open fire in a crowded German city using a gun fitted with a silencer.

The man, of Palestinian origin and identified as Shadi Mohammed Mustafa A., has confessed to belonging to Al Tawhid. He was arrested in April 2002 with three other people who are being charged separately.

His lawyer, Ruediger Deckers, said the man, who is 1.9 metres tall, had spent time as bin Laden's bodyguard. "He was an ideal bullet catcher due to his size," Deckers told reporters. He gave no further details.

Prosecutors declined to give Shadi A.'s full name, in line with German legal traditions. Sporting a beard and round glasses, he spoke in a calm voice and answered every question at the trial, expected to last three months.

Prosecutors say the attacks were planned with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - a Jordanian being sought on suspicion of heading the German cell of Al Tawhid - who the United States says helped set up a poison and explosives training camp in Iraq.

Washington has also accused al-Zarqawi of being an associate of bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants.

German authorities have arrested scores of suspected Islamic militants and cracked down on militant groups after it emerged that three of the suicide hijackers who led the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States had lived for years in the northern city of Hamburg.

In a related development yesterday, a German court set an August 14 trial date for a Moroccan man charged with being an accessory to the murder of 3,066 people in the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

A Hamburg state court said in a statement that 37 court dates between August and January 5, 2004, were scheduled for the trial of Abdelghani Mzoudi.

In May, German federal prosecutors charged Mzoudi with being an accessory to the murders and of being a member of the Hamburg-based al Qaeda cell that helped plan the attacks.