Duchy's appeal

BRUSSELS (Reuter) - Luxembourg's state prosecutor appealed to the highest court in the Grand Duchy against a court ruling that dollars 36m (pounds 24m) in suspected drug trafficking profits should be handed back to their Colombian owners.

A court ruled last week that the money, frozen in bank accounts in nine European countries, should be released because its owners had broken no law, although they were closely linked to a drugs cartel chief. The judge upheld the convictions of two Colombians charged with laundering drug profits for the Cali drug cartel but said the only money she could legally seize was dollars 30,000 paid to one of the two for his work. The Justice Minister, Marc Fischbach, called the judgment 'sensational' and said he would look at it carefully to see whether it could be legally annulled.