From Bloomberg.com, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:
April 6 (Bloomberg) — A Tunisian man had planned to become “active in a violent Jihad” while living in Germany, a Berlin court said today. He was sentenced to 3 3/4 years in prison for the possession of weapons and other offences.
Ihsan Garnaoui, 33, was found guilty of violating laws on the possession of weapons, forgery, tax evasion and entering Germany illegally, said Judge Frank-Michael Libera. After an 11- month trial, the regional court acquitted him of the main charge of founding a terrorist organization to plan bomb attacks.
“He entered Germany with the intention of becoming active in a violent Jihad and carrying out at least one attack with explosives,” Judge Libera said. “This is not enough to find the accused guilty of founding a terror organization.”
Federal Prosecutor Silke Ritzert accused Garnaoui of forming and training a terrorist group in Berlin after returning to Germany illegally in January 2003. The group was suspected in particular of planning a bomb attack during a demonstration against the Iraq war to “kill or injure a large number of people,” according to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office.
The group’s aim was to “humble western society and hallow the Muslim world and its moral concepts,” Ritzert told the court in her closing arguments. She had sought a six-year prison sentence for Garnaoui.
Acquittal Reasons
The court said it acquitted Garnaoui of the charge of founding the terror organization to carry out bomb attacks on Jewish and U.S. targets in Germany because it couldn’t prove that Garnaoui convinced other people to join him. The court also had “doubts about the reliability” of evidence submitted by unidentified police informants, Libera said. He said some of this evidence was contradictory and based on hearsay.