PARIS, Jan 4: Two alleged Al Qaeda kingpins and a third man go on trial in Paris on Monday, accused of plotting the 2002 suicide bombing of a synagogue in Tunisia that left 21 dead.

Held at the US Guantanamo prison camp, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be tried in absentia on terrorism charges but German national Christian Ganczarski and Tunisian Walid Nawar, the bomber’s brother, will be in court.

Sheikh Mohammed, who has confessed to being the architect of the September 11, 2001 attacks, is said to be Al Qaeda’s military commander responsible for all foreign operations.

The trial before a Paris court specialising in terror offences will focus much of its attention on Ganczarski, a German of Polish origin who converted to Islam and allegedly played a leading role in Al Qaeda’s network in Europe.

The trio are charged in France with “complicity in attempted murder in relation to a terrorist enterprise” and face a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail if convicted of the April 11, 2002 attack.

On that day, suicide bomber Nizar Nawar detonated a fuel tanker rigged with explosives in front of the Ghriba synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba, killing 14 German tourists, five Tunisians and two French nationals.

Nawar is alleged to have contacted both Ganczarski and Sheikh Mohammed shortly before the bombing. Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the attack.

French and German investigators believe Ganczarski travelled several times between 1999 and 2001 to the Pakistani-Afghan border to meet Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

The top operative, who was in regular contact with Sheikh Mohammed, put his considerable expertise in radio communications and web production at the service of Al Qaeda and helped recruit members in Europe, according to investigators.

Western intelligence agencies managed to track down Ganczarski after intercepting a call from the Djerba suicide bomber’s cell-phone and he was arrested in June 2003 at his arrival in France from Saudi Arabia.

Ganczarski is said to have given Nawar the green light to carry out the attack during the phone call.

Tunisian national Walid Nawar is said to have helped his brother carry out the Djerba bombing, notably by purchasing in France the cellphone from which he called Ganczarski and Sheikh Mohammed.

The bomber’s uncle, Belgacem Nawar, was convicted in Tunisia in June 2006 of involvement in the attack and sentenced to 20 years.

The uncle was found guilty of helping his nephew build the bomb – a large fuel container and detonator – inside the truck.

The trial in Paris opens one month after Sheikh Mohammed appeared before a US military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to answer charges that he was the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. The Paris trial is scheduled to end on February 6.—AFP