Romania Supreme Court Allows Omar Hayssam’s Criminal Associates To Leave Country

Romania’s Supreme Court Tuesday evening ruled that Omar Mukhles and Omar Mahmoud, brothers of Syrian terrorism convict Omar Hayssam, as well as Mustafa Tartoussi, owner of Iman T cargo ship Hayssam allegedly used to flee Romania, are free to leave the country.

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The Supreme Court Tuesday evening rejected organized crime prosecutors' appeal to the June 8 ruling of the Oradea Court of Appeals, which annulled the interdiction of the three to leave the country.

The case regarding Omar Hayssam's flight from Romania is tried at the Oradea Appeals Court after the Supreme Court admitted in May 2009 the request to have the case transferred from the Bucharest Court of Appeals.

End November 2007, Romanian prosecutors indicted Tartoussi, Mukhles and Mahmoud Omar on charges of aiding the escape of a terror suspect and Hayssam was charged with illegally exiting the country.

Investigators established that, between June 23 and 30, 2006, Tartoussi and Omar Mahmoud and Mukhles planned and aided the escape of Hayssam, accused of terrorism by organizing and financing the kidnapping of three Romanian journalists in Iraq.

In 2007, a Romanian court found Hayssam guilty of masterminding the kidnapping of three Romanian journalists in Iraq in 2005, and sentenced him in absentia to 20 years in prison.

Hayssam fled Romania in the first half of 2006, while under a terrorism inquiry for his role in the kidnapping, shortly after he was paroled on medical grounds in the first half of 2006.

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