Europe needs to get its act together...

You'd think they could get together and make sure stuff like this doesn't happen.

Europe's war against terrorism suffered a setback yesterday when Germany's highest court refused to allow the extradition to Spain of an al-Qa'eda suspect, ruling that the EU's new arrest warrant is invalid under German law.

The constitutional court said that Mamoun Darkazanli, a German citizen whose company is alleged to have been a front for the terrorist group's activities, could not be extradited as the warrant violated the constitution and therefore his basic rights.

Spain issued a warrant for his arrest last September and, as he was preparing to fly from Hamburg airport in the company of police officers two months later, the constitutional court halted the extradition process. He then spent 10 months in custody until his release yesterday.

Darkazanli, 46, a Syrian-German who lives in Hamburg, has been on a United States list of terror suspects since 2001.

He was a friend of the September 11 suicide pilots and appeared in a wedding video with two of them - Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah - two years before the Twin Towers attacks. Shehhi and Jarrah lived and studied in Hamburg with the ringleader of the attacks, Mohammed Atta.

Shortly after the attacks a business card belonging to Wadih El-Hage, the personal secretary to Osama bin Laden, was found in Darkazanli's possession.