Four suspects were set to go on trial in Paris on Tuesday to face charges they helped murder Afghan leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, just two days before the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. The suspects are accused of forging and obtaining the false documents that enabled two suicide killers -- Dahmane Adb al-Sattar and Bouraoui el-Ouaer -- to pose as Tunisian journalists traveling with stolen Belgian passports. The fake journalists approached Massoud in the northern Afghan town of Khwaja Bahauddin for an interview during which they blew up both themselves and Massoud. Massoud, known as the Lion of Panjshir, was the military leader of the Northern Alliance fighting the Taliban regime in power in Kabul in 2001.French anti-terrorism judges Jean-Louis Bruguihre and Jean-Frangois Ricard said in November when ordering the suspects to stand trial that the investigation was not into Massoud's killing per se, but the extensive support network backing the assassins. Using the passports found on Massoud's assassins, investigators said they traced the support network and found that Massoud's killers were able to carry out the deed by using channels for transporting Islamist volunteers for jihad, or holy war, from Europe. The four suspects are Youssef el-Aouni, 31, a Frenchman of Morroccan origin; Adel Tebourski, 41, also French of Tunisian origin; Abderahmane Ameroud, a 27-year-old Algerian, and Mehrez Azouz, 37, a French-Algerian.
According to investigators, Tebourski admitted to belonging to an Islamist group led by al-Sattar composed of about 10 people. He also reportedly described how before Dahmane left for Afghanistan in May 2000 he exchanged up to 30,000 francs into dollars (6,000 dollars) for the assassin. Four other radical Islamist suspects also will face court in Paris this week, three of them suspected of having organized paramilitary sessions allegedly aimed at selecting recruits to go to Afghanistan. The training was alleged to have taken place in the Fontainebleau forest south of Paris and in the French Alps. Another suspect is charged with being in France illegally. The trials are expected to last until April 20.