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German Judges Won't Drop Sept. 11 Charges

GEIR MOULSON
Associated Press

HAMBURG, Germany - A five-judge panel refused to release a Sept. 11 terror suspect in Germany Wednesday despite defense arguments that there is a flaw in the timeline prosecutors have assembled for the case.

Lawyers for Abdelghani Mzoudi, a Moroccan accused of supporting the Hamburg cell of al-Qaida, claim the cell only became involved in the suicide plane plot after four members attended Afghan training camps in late 1999. The indictment alleges their planning began months earlier.

However, the judges cited witness testimony that Mzoudi had been "in close contact over years" with the Hamburg terror cell, and appeared to reject the argument that the timeline presented by German intelligence agency chief Heinz Fromm undermined the government's case.

Fromm testified Friday that the plot originated with bin Laden's terror network in Afghanistan. He told the court that members of the Hamburg cell did not know the chosen targets or the plan to use airplanes until suicide pilots Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah and suspected al-Qaida contact Ramzi Binalshibh attended the Afghan camps.

"Federal prosecutors have built their case around the fact that the attack was planned in 1999 in Hamburg, and when that is not right, do the other charges against Mzoudi hold?" said defense lawyer Guel Pinar.

The indictment - which charges Mzoudi with 3,066 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization - says the group devised the plan in Hamburg in early 1999. Another Moroccan, Mounir el Motassadeq, was found guilty of the same charges, using identical arguments and timeframe, in February.

The government provided evidence in both trials that Atta and the others were actively involved in the Sept. 11 plot in Hamburg after returning from Afghanistan, locating flight schools and setting up payments for example.

This, experts say, should be enough to prosecute members of the cell under the German law at the time, which did not criminalize membership in a foreign terrorist organization, thus making it necessary to prove they were a domestic group.

Still, German media have been quick to question the strength of the government's case based on Fromm's testimony.

"Of course, this by no means proves that he and el Motassadeq are innocent," Der Spiegel wrote in its latest issue. But "Fromm's testimony makes it more difficult to prove that the opposite is the case."

Terrorism experts downplayed the defense argument. Even if the hijackers received their instructions in Afghanistan in late 1999, that does not disprove the government's assertion they formed an al-Qaida terror cell that summer intent on attacking the United States, said Kai Hirschmann, a terrorism researcher at the Federal College for Security Studies in Bonn.

"In my opinion, Fromm's testimony didn't change much at all," Hirschmann said. "But because now a public discussion has begun over what he said, I'm a little afraid this train will move onto the wrong tracks."