Sept. 11 mastermind on trial in Tunisia attack

Khalid Sheik Mohammed was captured in March 2003.

PARIS - Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-styled mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, went on trial in Paris yesterday on charges he helped organize a truck-bomb attack on an ancient Tunisian synagogue seven months later in which 21 people were killed.

Although far less deadly than the attacks in New York and Washington, the bombing in Tunisia dramatized Al Qaeda's support beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan. It occurred at a time when the United States and the rest of the world were coming to grips with the long-term threat posed by Osama bin Laden and gaining an understanding that his followers were scattered in a number of countries, including some in Europe and North Africa.

Mohammed, 44, who was captured in Pakistan in March 2003 and is being held at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is being tried in absentia. Two codefendants, Christian Ganczarski, 42, a German citizen of Polish origin who converted to Islam, and Walid Naouar, 28, a Tunisian, appeared in a Paris courtroom under tight security as proceedings got underway for what is scheduled to be a five-week trial before an antiterrorism tribunal.

According to charges brought by French authorities, Naouar's brother, Nizar, drove a tanker truck laden with propane gas into the historic Ghriba synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba on April 11, 2002. The blast killed the driver and 14 German tourists, five Tunisians, and two French citizens, providing the basis for the trial in France.

Prosecutors alleged yesterday that Nizar Naouar followed directions from Ganczarski and Mohammed in carrying out the attack. He received more than $20,000 from Mohammed to pay for the preparations, they said, and called Mohammed in Pakistan and Ganczarski in Germany just before the bombing, using a satellite phone.

WASHINGTON POST