Four on trial over Masood murder

By Hugh Schofield
Paris

Masood was killed just two days before the 11 September attacks

The trial has opened in Paris of four men accused of giving logistical support to the killers of the Afghan resistance leader Ahmed Shah Masood.

Masood, who was fighting the Taleban regime, was killed in September 2001.

He was blown up by two men posing as journalists two days before the al-Qaeda attacks in the United States.

The four men were arrested after an investigation across several European countries into the events leading to Ahmed Shah Massoud's death.

They are all of North African origin.

Training camps

Police established that the two killers, who themselves died in the blast in northern Afghanistan, had acquired fake Belgian passports concocted from documents stolen in previous years in the Netherlands and France.

The trail led to a network of Islamic radicals operating under the command of a Belgian-based man, Tarek Maaroufi.

He has since been sentenced to six years in prison in Brussels.

The four men on trial in Paris are accused of supplying logistical back-up to the conspiracy and are charged with a criminal association in relation with a terrorist enterprise.

One of the men is said to have procured US dollars for Massoud's killers before they left for Afghanistan.

Three others are appearing in the same trial accused of running paramilitary training camps in France for volunteers to travel to Afghanistan.