Early on the morning of May 26th, German police accompanied by a Frenchman in plain clothes raided an apartment on the outskirts of Cologne and arrested a 27-year-old asylum-seeker named Adel Mechat. They seized videotapes, computer disks and address books.
More than 80 Algerians were arrested in the two-day Europe-wide dragnet at the request of the French Judge Jean-Louis Brugiere.
The Algerians were planning an attack in France during the World Cup, the French claimed - before they released most of the suspects. Final arrangements for the roundup had been made a week earlier, at a Naples meeting attended by the Algerian and French ministers of the interior.
Mr Mechat was billed as the biggest catch of all - "the right-hand man" of Hassan Hattab, a breakaway leader of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), who was allegedly trying to assert his authority in Algeria by resurrecting a GIA network in Europe. The Algerian government claims Hattab murdered Kasdi Merbah, the former head of Military Security, in 1993 and the singer Lounes Matoub last month.
German authorities have since dropped charges against Mr Mechat, but he remains in prison, weakened by a hunger strike, while Judge Brugiere's extradition request is pending. The case raises the question of co-operation between European authorities and an Algerian regime that has made a mockery of due process of law.
The Mechat family are terrified that Adel Mechat will be extradited to Paris. Reports by the European Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International have documented French police brutality. More dangerous still, French judges often deport North Africans when their prison sentences are completed.
In Mr Mechat's case, return to Algeria would be tantamount to execution, as he and his brother, Wahid, have been sentenced to death in absentia. According to Wahid's wife, Rahila, a medical secretary in London, Adel Mechat fled Algeria via Morocco in mid1993. His brother followed at the end of 1993, stopping for 18 months in Saudi Arabia, then settling in London, where he now works as a shop assistant. Both brothers had been activists in the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), although Adel, the younger, was more involved. A third brother, Liamine, was sent to Algiers' Harrach prison in 1993. "They are holding Liamine because they want the others to come back," Mrs Mechat said.
Back in the Algiers suburb of Kouba, the Mechat family have a difficult time. The father's passport was taken from him, and the husband of Adel and Wahid's sister Nawal was arrested when she was pregnant with their first son.
Mrs Mechat swears her husband and brother-in-law never took up arms against the Algerian government, that the authorities fabricated murder charges against them because they were a political threat. Nor, she claims, did Adel Mechat have any contacts with the GIA in Europe. "I'm 100 per cent sure Adel is a political prisoner," she says.
In Cologne, Adel Mechat lived for the past five years with AbdelKader Ait-El Hadi (62), and his wife, Yamina. Last winter he married Bahia, an Algerian refugee, and the couple lived on German welfare payments. Their friend and host, Mr Ait-El Hadi, has also been sentenced to death in absentia - a tactic often used by the Algerian government to make sure that political opponents don't come back. One of the Ait-El Hadi sons was killed in Algeria; the other son, Mustafa, was arrested with Mr Mechat by German police but released the same evening. "We Algerians are tormented at home, and we're tormented here," Mrs Ait-El Hadi said. "I don't know where we can live."
Adel Mechat's German lawyer, Jorg Hohberg, says the only evidence in the extradition warrant is the testimony of Yassine Atamnieh, an Algerian arrested in Belgium who claimed a third person told him Mechat was one of the most important GIA men in Europe. "The German federal prosecutor says he has no reason to hold him. Yet based on the exact same facts, the French judge says he wants to extradite him and try him," Mr Hohberg said. He has known Mr Mechat for a year and insists that "he's a gentle man. He does not have the attitude of a terrorist leader." Short and slightly built, Mr Mechat was born with a club foot.
Gareth Peirce, the British lawyer who obtained the release of the Guildford Four, is fighting Judge Brugiere's attempt to extradite another Algerian, Mr Rachid Ramda, from Britain. Mr Brugiere believes Mr Ramda was the treasurer for an extremist group that staged a series of bombings in France in 1995. "The decisions seem to be written in advance," Ms Peirce said. A solicitor from her firm attended the Paris trial of Islamists accused of providing logistical support to militants. "It seemed farcical. There was no opportunity to present a defence," she said. "Anyone who comes under the Islamic umbrella is not going to get a fair crack of the whip (in France)."
The details of asylum applications made by Algerians in Britain often end up in the hands of Algerian intelligence, Ms Peirce said. She was scandalised to hear a British Interpol officer boast in an interview of his co-operation with Algerian authorities. "What's disturbing is that it's clearly a government which is making use of torture and genocide. And European governments are actively co-operating with them, putting people at risk both here and in Algeria."
Reuters adds from Algiers: A high-profile UN panel on a fact-finding mission in Algeria yesterday visited a prison where 98 people - mostly Muslim rebels - were killed in a 1994 mutiny.
The team, formed by UN Secretary-General Mr Kofi Annan and led by former Portuguese president Mr Mario Soares, later visited Beni Messous, 10 km west of the capital where Muslim rebels slaughtered 29 people in September, officials said. Authorities banned journalists from accompanying the six-member team visiting the Serkadji high-security prison.