Terror Suspects Extradited To U.S.

Germany has extradited two Yemenis to the United States on charges that they supported the al Qaeda terrorist network, prosecutors said Monday.

The two men, Sheikh Ali Hassan al-Moayad and his alleged assistant, Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed, were picked up Sunday by American officials and flown out of the Rhine-Main Air Base near Frankfurt by the U.S. Air Force, said Hildegard Becker-Toussaint, a spokeswoman for Frankfurt prosecutors.

The move came after the Federal Constitutional Court ruled Thursday that the two could expect a fair trial in the United States, rejecting the complaints they filed against lower-court decisions backing extradition.

The U.S. assured Germany authorities the two would get a fair trial in a criminal court and not a tribunal, reports CBS News' Kyle James.

The German government then decided Friday to send the men to the United States, Becker-Toussaint said.

"It was the end of the fighting," she said. "The court made its decision and then the government extradited them."

The two men were sent to New York City for prosecution, Becker-Toussaint said. She said she did not know when al-Moayad and Zayed arrived in the United States nor where they were being held.

The two were arrested Jan. 10 in a sting operation at a Frankfurt hotel, where they had expected to meet a wealthy American Muslim.

Officials there have said Al-Moayyed, a leading member of the Yemen's Islamic-oriented Reform party, left his country for medical treatment in Germany 10 days before his arrest. The former legislator has asthma and diabetes.

U.S. and German authorities say they learned in December 2001 that al-Moayad was involved in supplying money and militants for Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network as well as to the Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas.

According to papers from a Brooklyn federal court supporting the extradition request that were released in March, al-Moayad told an FBI informant that he supplied $20 million, recruits and weapons to bin Laden in the years before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Yemen has long maintained that al-Moayad is innocent and had asked Germany to return both men to Yemen, suggesting it could affect Yemeni-American relations if they were not.

Yemen, a hotbed for militancy and the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, has been an active participant in U.S.-led war on terror. The country has led an aggressive campaign to crack down on militants and an FBI office is expected to open in Yemen soon.

If convicted in the United States, al-Moayad would face up to 60 years in prison, U.S. prosecutors have said. Zayed, who faces a conspiracy charge, could be jailed for up to 30 years.

The two fought extradition in both German and European courts.