Delays drag on in Metro bomb case

PARIS - With memories of the July 7 London terror bombings still fresh in British minds, a British court is poised to decide the controversial fate of an Algerian sought in France for the bloodiest Islamist atrocity on its soil.

The High Court is expected to announce shortly its verdict in a French request, now almost 10 years old, to extradite Rachid Ramda, a suspected member of Algeria's outlawed Armed Islamic Group (GIA).

The saga has stretched French-British relations for years. It has prompted barely-veiled French accusations that Britain turned a blind eye to Islamic radicalism on its soil, making the attacks on the London transport system inevitable.

In November 1995, Ramda was detained in Britain, where he was living with asylum status, a few days after French investigators filed an international warrant for his arrest.

That summer, a series of bombings on the Paris Metro and underground railway, attributed to the GIA, killed 10 people and left almost 250 injured. The bloodiest outrage, on July 25 that year, occurred at the Saint Michel station in the Left Bank, when eight commuters lost their lives and 150 were injured by a bomb packed with nails and bolts.

An even greater toll was narrowly avoided when the bombers tried to derail a TGV high-speed train travelling from Lyons to Paris that August.

France wants Ramda to stand trial on charges of conspiracy to cause the Saint Michel blast and of financing and organising the other attacks. But to its frustration, Ramda has used Britain's appeals system to thwart extradition.

In 2002, a court turned down an extradition order signed by then Home Secretary David Blunkett on the grounds that he had failed to consider the risk that Ramda could suffer ill-treatment by the French while under interrogation, which had allegedly happened to a convicted member of the terror gang, Boualem Bensaid.

The case was thrown back for review, and Blunkett's successor, Charles Clarke, re-ordered the extradition last April.

Ramda's lawyers are again fighting this, saying the decision is legally flawed because a confession implicating him in the attacks was given under duress.

Whereas it took 10 months for Blunkett's first extradition to be considered by the High Court, this time the appeal is being given fast-track treatment in the climate of urgency following the London bombings.

Ramda's extradition cannot come a moment too soon for France, which is seething at the way Britain makes worthy speeches about beefing up collaboration against terrorism yet at the same seems to drag its feet over handing over a suspect.

The Ramda case has been brought up scores of times in bilateral contacts, with French diplomats and ministers pressing for his extradition. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin lobbied British counterpart Tony Blair for a speedy resolution in their first meeting after July 7.

To Paris, the delays suggest a lack of willpower on the British side. A Parisian investigator said Britain was caught in a procedural trap that Ramda's lawyers have used to thwart the British authorities.

Some voice a darker view. Within French counter-terrorism circles, there is a mood of "I told you so" after the London bombings, because for years Britain did almost nothing to counter the buildup of violent Islamists on its soil - proselytising jihadists from Algeria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia who claimed asylum rights.

In the 1990s, the British capital came to be dubbed Londonistan by the French foreign intelligence service, DGSE, which was so untrusting of the British security agencies that it conducted its own undercover surveillance of Islamist suspects there, says former agent Pierre Martinet.

In 2002, left-of-centre news weekly Le Nouvel Observateur - not a publication associated with wild accusations - said Ramda had been turned by the British intelligence services, which had offered him protection in exchange for information about financing practices within the international Islamist movement.

The main evidence against Ramda, now aged 35, is that his fingerprints were found on a money order to Western Union that dispatched 5000 to Bensaid, and that police found at his London home written orders from the GIA about the bombing campaigns, documents about the GIA and the text of an GIA ultimatum addressed to President Jacques Chirac on August 27, 1995.

Phone records purportedly show that he was in constant telephone contact with Bensaid and another bomber, Ali Touchent.

Bensaid and another member of the ring, Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, are serving life terms for two of the Paris bombings and Touchent, according to the Algerian Government, was killed in Algeria in 1997.

A fourth person, Khaled Kelkal, whose fingerprints were found on the unexploded bomb on the TGV track, was killed in a shootout with French police in September 1995.

Paris Metro attack

* 10 people died and 250 were injured in attacks on the Paris subway in 1995.

* The bombings were carried out by Algeria's Armed Islamic Group.

* Eight people died and 150 were injured in an attack on Saint Michel station.

* Two people were killed at another station on August 17.

* An attack on a TGV high-speed Lyons-Paris train in August failed when a bomb did not explode.

* Rachid Ramda is wanted by France over the bombings.

* Boualem Bensaid and Smain Ait Ali Belkacem are serving life terms.

* Ali Touchent, according to Algeria, was killed there in 1997.

* Khaled Kelkal, whose fingerprints were found on the bomb on the TGV track, was killed by French police in 1995.