DATE=1/17/2000
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=GERMANY TERRORIST TRIAL (L-ONLY)
NUMBER=2-258131
BYLINE=JONATHAN BRAUDE
DATELINE=BERLIN
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: Johannes Weinrich, a key terrorist
collaborator of the man called Carlos "The Jackal,"
has been sentenced to life imprisonment in a German
court for a deadly 1983 bomb attack on the French
cultural center in what was then West Berlin.
Jonathan Braude reports from the German capital.
TEXT: After nearly four years, the trial of former
Red Brigades terrorist Johannes Weinrich has ended. A
Berlin court found the 52-year-old guilty of murder
and attempted murder, and sentenced him to life
imprisonment.
One man died in the bomb attack on the French cultural
center 17-years ago, and 23 other people were injured.
A former Syrian diplomat, Nabil Shritah, was also
convicted of being an accessory to Weinrich's bombing.
He stored the explosives used in the attack at the
Syrian Embassy in East Berlin and gave them back to
Weinrich the day he slipped into West Berlin and
planted the bomb. Shritah received a two-year
suspended sentence.
The defense tried to shed doubt on the authenticity of
a key letter Weinrich allegedly wrote to Carlos the
Jackal and tried to portray Shritah as an unreliable
witness.
Weinrich never personally responded to the charges.
He did not even refer to them last week, in his final
address to the court.
The prosecution based its evidence largely on the
files of the former East German secret police, the
Stasi. The files were only unearthed after the
reunification of the two Germanies in 1990.
The Stasi's carefully catalogued archives have proved
a gold mine for western prosecutors during the past
decade.
By the time Weinrich was arrested in Yemen in 1995 - a
year after the Jackal's arrest in the Sudan - the
letter to Carlos had been found in the files. The
letter carried details of the bombing and gave away
the motive. It was one of several attempts to free
two members of Carlos' terrorist grouping from prison
in France.
Carlos the Jackal, whose real name is Illich Ramirez
Sanchez, is serving a life sentence in France.
(SIGNED)
NEB/JB/GE/RAE
17-Jan-2000 08:04 AM EDT (17-Jan-2000 1304 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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