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PARIS, Dec 12: France demanded on Wednesday that the United States not execute a Frenchman charged with plotting the Sept 11 attacks even if a US federal court finds Zacarias Moussaoui guilty on terrorism charges.
Highlighting possible tensions between Washington and its European partners in the campaign against terrorism, Justice Minister Marylise Lebranchu said Paris would not accept the death penalty for Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan descent.
“Of course, no person benefiting from French consular protection should be executed,” she told RMC radio.
France, like virtually every European country, no longer has a death penalty, having scrapped the guillotine in 1981.
A foreign ministry spokesman confirmed that France would take steps to ensure Moussaoui was not executed if convicted.
“That stems from our general position on the death penalty,” he told a regular news briefing.
A leading French human rights group urged the government to protect Moussaoui from execution and give him legal aid.
“Today more than ever, France must confirm its commitment to stand against the death penalty,” Michel Taube, president of the group Together Against the Death Penalty, said in a statement.
Seeking to calm European fears that terrorism suspects extradited to the United States would inevitably risk the death penalty, US Attorney General John Ashcroft told a news conference in London each case would be examined separately.
Previous executions of European citizens in the United States have provoked public outcry in Europe and some governments have been reluctant to extradite suspects across the Atlantic without guarantees they will not be put to death.
Moussaoui, 33, took flying lessons in the United States and officials there believe he may have been preparing to join one of four hijacking teams that struck New York and Washington.
After the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Moussaoui was arrested as a material witness and sent to New York for questioning.
An indictment released on Tuesday charged Moussaoui with conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism, to commit aircraft piracy, to destroy aircraft, to use weapons of mass destruction, to murder US employees and to destroy property.
He will be tried in a federal court and not in a military tribunal that has been proposed by President George W. Bush for foreigners suspected of involvement in the attacks.
U.N. Security Council member France has voiced opposition to such tribunals, one of several differences between Paris and Washington on how to proceed in the crackdown against terror.
French officials have said they could not support any widening of military action beyond Afghanistan without clear evidence of terrorist activity and without a UN mandate.
US TRIES TO CALM EU: The United States, countering European concerns over extraditing terror suspects to face the death penalty, indicated on Wednesday that those going for trial would not inevitably risk capital punishment.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, kicking off a four-nation tour of Europe designed to bolster international cooperation against terrorism, said each extradition case would be looked at separately.
“Individuals and nations with which we have dealt regarding extraditions have dealt on a case-by-case basis and I think that is the best way to go forward,” Ashcroft told a news conference.
Britain shared French concerns and Ashcroft was careful to say every state must maintain its independence in the joint war.
“I do not stand in judgment of other nations, about what they are doing. I understand that as mature sovereigns they need to make assessments of their own,” he said after meeting British Home Secretary David Blunkett.
“I urge for the safety and security of freedom-loving people everywhere that assessments be made in light of the nature of terrorism,” Ashcroft said.
Ashcroft has come under fire from rights groups at home who say security measures proposed since Sept 11 ride roughshod over the liberty of Arabs and Arab-Americans.
The same fears ring true in Britain, where the House of Lords has repeatedly blocked an anti-terror bill that proposes sweeping new powers to police and security forces.
“We can protect the American people and at the same time respect the rights of citizens that are enshrined in the constitution of the United States,” Ashcroft said.
He also vowed there would be no let-up in the U.S.-led clampdown on extremists, saying Sept 11 taught the world lessons about the nature of terrorism, which now cut across all international borders.
“The training frequently takes place in one jurisdiction, the development and planning of an operation takes place in another jurisdiction and the operation itself might be executed in a third or fourth jurisdiction,” he said. “It makes it very important for us to have the capacity to co-operate.”—Reuters
