Posted on 02/22/2003 9:23:39 AM PST by knighthawk
BERLIN (AP) — A second suspected helper of the Germany-based Sept. 11 hijackers will soon be charged with supporting a terrorist organization, the country's federal prosecutor said in remarks released Saturday.
Abdelghani Mzoudi, a 29-year-old Moroccan, will be charged ``in the coming weeks on suspicion of supporting the Hamburg cell'' which included three of the pilots of the hijacked planes, Federal Prosecutor Kay Nehm said in a magazine interview.
Nehm's spokeswoman, Frauke Scheuten, said Mzoudi would be tried in the Hamburg state court where the first Sept. 11 suspect to face trial anywhere in the world was convicted Wednesday of belonging to a terrorist organization and 3,066 counts of accessory to murder.
Mounir el Motassadeq, a 28-year-old Moroccan, was given the maximum 15 year jail sentence. His lawyers have appealed.
Mzoudi was picked up in Hamburg in October on suspicion that he had supported the terrorists living in the northern port city, though Nehm indicated at the time that his office was trying to build an accessory to murder case.
Scheuten declined to give further details of the investigation against Mzoudi, which she said was one of 10 against suspected supporters of the Hamburg plot centered on hijacker Mohamed Atta.
``We are now harvesting the fruit of our efforts,'' Nehm was quoted as saying in the Der Spiegel weekly.
German investigators questioned Mzoudi last summer when they raided an Islamic bookstore in Hamburg believed to be a meeting place for fundamentalists planning new attacks.
But they lacked sufficient evidence to arrest him until a witness placed Mzoudi in Afghan training camps in 2000 at the same time as el Motassadeq and Zakariya Essabar, also suspected of being a cell logistician. El Motassadeq later testified that he had run into his friend Mzoudi in Afghanistan.
Nehm has said Mzoudi gave support in two ways: three money transfers in late 2000 or early 2001 from his bank account to Essabar, who was intended to be one of the pilots but failed to get a U.S. visa for flight training, and help finding an apartment for hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi in Hamburg in May 2000.
Mzoudi also lived for a time in a Hamburg apartment used by Atta, al-Shehhi, Ramzi Binalshibh — believed to have been the key contact person between the Hamburg cell and al-Qaida, and suspected logistical experts Said Bahaji and Essabar, who are still on the run and wanted on German arrest warrants.
Scheuten said that German prosecutors were running a total of 60 investigations against more than 100 individuals for suspected support of Islamic extremist groups. She gave no further details.
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