Lawyers worry about 9/11 convict's future (Hamburg al-Qaida cell)

Bakersfield Californian ^ | 6/5/05 | David Rising - AP

[NormsRevenge]

HAMBURG, Germany (AP) - Lawyers for the first person convicted in the Sept. 11 plot say they believe new evidence from the U.S. will allow him to beat charges that he helped the Hamburg al-Qaida cell plan the attacks - but fear acquittal here may put Mounir el Motassadeq in U.S. custody.

If el Motassadeq is found not guilty after a yearlong retrial that ends this summer, German authorities say they'll send him to his native Morocco - a move defense attorneys say could result in his transfer to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or elsewhere.

El Motassadeq's friend Abdelghani Mzoudi faces the same possible fate. An appeals court is to rule Thursday on a prosecution appeal of Mzoudi's acquittal last year on the same terrorism charges. Hamburg authorities say they'll turn him over to Morocco if the verdict is upheld.

In their North African homeland, the two, known in Hamburg law enforcement circles as M&M, would be left open for "rendition" - a U.S. practice of having foreign suspects apprehended and transferred to another country for prosecution and detention, said Rolf Tophoven, an expert at Essen's Institute for Terrorism Research and Security Issues.

In 2001, the suspects' friend Mohammed Haydar Zammar was apprehended during a trip to Morocco, according to his family, after being accused of helping recruit lead suicide pilot Mohamed Atta and others in the Hamburg cell. The circumstances of his arrest are unclear, but U.S. officials have confirmed the Syrian-born naturalized German is now in Syrian custody.

"The Moroccan intelligence services are in very close cooperation with their colleagues in the CIA and I'm absolutely convinced that if you give these guys back to their homeland, they will be in Guantanamo in a couple of days," Tophoven said.

El Motassadeq, 31, is aware of the risk, said defense attorney Udo Jacob, although Moroccan authorities say they have no warrants for him or Mzoudi.

"The hope of my client is that as a Moroccan citizen they will have to shelter him," Jacob told The Associated Press. "Mohammed Zammar is not a Moroccan, he's a Syrian, and they sent him to Syria. He also hopes the Americans will respect the German decision and will not keep going on and on with the case."

The U.S. Embassy in Berlin declined comment on whether U.S. intelligence services were interested in el Motassadeq or Mzoudi.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. authorities have flown at least 100 foreign terror suspects to countries, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, under the rendition program. In March testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, CIA Director Porter Goss defended the program as a 20-year-old practice with established safeguards and oversight.

The White House has also defended the practice, saying the United States receives assurances before terrorism suspects are moved to a foreign country that they will not be tortured.

More than 500 prisoners from some 40 countries are still being held on the U.S. military base at Guantanamo. Human rights groups and defense lawyers have criticized the camp, where many prisoners have been held for more than three years without charges filed against them.

Human Rights Watch in March drew attention to the case of a Yemeni intelligence officer as an example of the U.S. use of renditions to Guantanamo.

Abd al-Salam Ali al-Hila, a Yemeni intelligence colonel and businessman, was seized on a Cairo street by Egyptian authorities on Sept. 19, 2002, the New York-based rights group said, citing Yemeni authorities and al-Hila's brother. He was taken within 10 days to Azerbaijan then to the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and finally to Guantanamo in mid-2004.

El Motassadeq is accused of providing logistical support for Atta, and suicide pilots Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah. He admits he was friends with all three and helped them as a Muslim "brother," but maintains he had no knowledge of their plot to attack New York and the Pentagon.

Prosecutors argue the body of circumstantial evidence is enough to show el Motassadeq was a member of the Hamburg cell as it plotted.

For example, he had power of attorney over al-Shehhi's bank account and used it to transfer 5,000 marks, or more than $3,000 at current rates, to Ramzi Binalshibh, the Hamburg cell's suspected contact with the al-Qaida network, on Sept. 25, 2000. Two days later, Binalshibh wired 10,000 marks, or more than $6,000, to al-Shehhi, who was at a flight school in the U.S.

A former university flatmate testified that Atta and Binalshibh were part of a regular group of visitors, and he once overheard el Motassadeq saying, "We are going to something big. He said: 'The Jews will burn; we will dance on their graves.'"

"There are many little things that put together show they were preparing for attacks," lead prosecutor Walter Hemberger told AP. "They were clearly no school children."

El Motassadeq was freed after an appeals court in March 2004 overturned his sentence of 15-years for membership in a terrorist organization and on 3,066 counts of accessory to murder - reflecting the estimated Sept. 11 death toll at the time he was charged. The appeals court said he was unfairly denied testimony from terrorist suspects held by the U.S.

In the retrial, el Motassadeq has sat through 61 court days, spread out one or two a week since last August, returning home at night to his Russian wife and two young children in their suburban flat around the corner from where Atta once plotted.

Though most of the witnesses have been the same as in his previous trial, the U.S. this time provided the court with summaries of interrogations of three key captives, Binalshibh, suspected Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian suspected of helping organize the Hamburg cell members' trips to Afghanistan.

The defense has seized upon the reports as evidence el Motassadeq wasn't involved in the plot - Binalshibh told investigators he and the three suicide pilots alone comprised the Hamburg cell and all three said or implied the plot originated in Afghanistan.

Though there are serious doubts about Binalshibh's characterization of the cell - the U.S. Justice Department said he may have been deceiving investigators and that there were many contradictions - Jacob said the evidence of the plot's origin alone should exonerate his client.

El Motassadeq has admitted training in Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan, but while laws passed since Sept. 11 now make it illegal to be a member of al-Qaida in Germany, in 2001 it was legal to support a foreign terrorist organization from German soil.

[NormsRevenge]

Moroccan Mounir el Motassadeq, who is accused of helping to plot the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, waits for the start of his retrial at a court in Hamburg, northern Germany, in this Sept. 7, 2004 file photo. Mounir el Motassadeq trained as a terrorist in al-Qaida camps and was close friends of three of the Sept. 11 suicide pilots, but after nearly a year of testimony in his retrial no hard evidence has emerged to definitively prove he was a member of their plot. Prosecutors maintain the circumstantial evidence is enough to reconvict him, but if he is freed a possible worse fate awaits him than a German jail. Hamburg state officials say they will return the 31-year-old to his native Morocco once appeals are exhausted, the same thing they are in the process of doing to his friend Abdelghani Mzoudi, who was found not guilty last year of the same charges el Motassadeq faces. (AP Photo/Christof Stache, Pool)

[NormsRevenge]

German prosecutors on May 12 2005 demanded a new trial for a Moroccan man acquitted last year of complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, arguing the verdict was flawed. Prosecutor Gerhard Altvater told the Federal Supreme Court the judges' ruling that acquitted Abdelghani Mzoudi was full of mistakes, and the case should be tried again. Moroccan Abdelghani Mzoudi (L) talks to his lawyer Guel Pinar in criminal court in the northern German city of Hamburg December 23, 2003. Photo by Pool/Reuters

[Gunrunner2]

Ugh. . what a face. . .looks like a pig-butt-muncher to me.