Ten alleged members of an al-Qaida cell, including a man believed to be a senior lieutenant of Osama bin Laden and a suspect being held in a British jail, went on trial in France yesterday accused of plotting a bomb attack on Strasbourg’s Christmas market. The suspected members of the so-called Frankfurt cell of mainly Algerian radical Islamists allegedly planned to blow up the market on New Year’s Eve 2000 using pressure cookers packed with explosives and nails – a technique that, police claim, four of them learned in al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan in the 1990s. Four other members of the cell were arrested in Germany days before the alleged attack was to take place and later sentenced to up to 12 years in jail.Full Story