GENEVA - Switzerland’s top criminal court on Wednesday cleared seven men who were accused of providing logistical support for the Al Qaeda terror network.

Swiss federal prosecutors had alleged that the five Yemenis, a Somali and an Iraqi had sought to provide false passports for a terror suspect and had set up a network to smuggle East African and Arab nationals into Switzerland between 1998 and 2004.

The charge sheet included participation in or providing support for a criminal organisation, corruption and forgery.The Federal Criminal Court acquitted them on the charges relating to terrorist activities at the end of a five-week trial, the Swiss news agency ATS said.The court only found them guilty on a lesser charge of breaking immigration laws, and handed down fines and suspended sentences, it added.Swiss prosecutor Claude Nicati had accused the oldest defendant, a 59-year-old Yemeni who sought asylum in Switzerland in 2001, of trying to supply false identity documents to Abdullah Al Rimi.

Rimi was identified as taking part in the October 2000 suicide attack on a US warship in the Yemeni port of Aden, which killed seven US sailors, and in attacks in the Saudi city of Riyadh in 2003. [more]