Prague, Sept 14 (CTK) – The criminal activity of the three suspected terrorist helpers detained in the Czech Republic was not provoked by U.S. agents, the U.S. Department of Justice has said in a document requested by the Prague Municipal Court.
The evaluation of the agents’ steps is crucial for the extradition of the three foreigners to the USA because the Czech law does not allow police provocation.
If convicted in the USA, the three men can receive life sentences.
The court panel at first wanted to deliver the decision on the extradition yesterday, but it has asked for a week for deliberations as the case is very complicated.
The U.S. authorities say Ali Fayad, Faouzi Jaber and Khaled Marabi wanted to sell arms and cocaine to the U.S. agents who pretended to be the Colombian FARC members.
The agents met the suspects in Ghana, then in Warsaw and finally in a hotel in Prague where the three were arrested last April. They have stayed in Czech custody since.
Jaber and Marabi come from Ivory Coast. Fayad is a Lebanese with Ukrainian citizenship.
Fayad is reportedly a brother of the taxi-driver from whose car five Czechs, including Fayad’s lawyer, disappeared in Lebanon this July.
Chairman of the court panel Lubos Vrba yesterday read the U.S. statement that on the part of the agents it was no provocation by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
It said all the three men had committed crime before they came into contact with the agents.
Moreover, at the meetings with the agents they themselves developed some activity, offering arms for the prices they had fixed and arranging further meetings.
The three plead innocent, arguing that the accusations are based on provocations and lies.
After the five Czechs disappeared in Lebanon in July, the Lebanese news agency NNA wrote that they had been kidnapped by unknown armed men in order to organise a swap for Fayad.
The Czech Foreign Ministry has declined to comment on the news.
