Al-Qaida Bomb Plot Trial Begins

Ten alleged members of an al-Qaida cell, including a man believed to be a senior lieutenant of Osama bin Laden and a suspect being held in a British jail, went on trial in France yesterday accused of plotting a bomb attack on Strasbourg's Christmas market.

The suspected members of the so-called Frankfurt cell of mainly Algerian radical Islamists allegedly planned to blow up the market on New Year's Eve 2000 using pressure cookers packed with explosives and nails - a technique that, police claim, four of them learned in al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

Four other members of the cell were arrested in Germany days before the alleged attack was to take place and later sentenced to up to 12 years in jail.

Evidence against them included videotape footage of the crowded, brightly-lit market and Strasbourg cathedral, with the voice of one of the men saying: "These are enemies of God; they will burn in hell."

The four main suspects on trial in France are Slimane Khalfaoui, 29, Yacine Akhnouche, 30, Rabah Kadri, 37, and Mohamed Bensakria, 37, who was extradited from Spain in 2001 and is seen as one of Bin Laden's chief lieutenants in Europe. Mr Kadri was arrested in London in 2002 and remains in a British prison; he will be tried in absentia in hearings expected to last up to three months.