Posted on 02/19/2003 4:46:44 AM PST by JohnHuang2
Edited on 02/19/2003 4:59:15 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
HAMBURG, Germany --A Moroccan man accused of aiding the September 11 suicide hijackers has been jailed for 15 years in the first trial of a suspect in the plot to attack the United States.
Mounir el Motassadeq, a 28-year-old electrical engineering student, was found guilty of being an accessory to 3,045 murders in New York and Washington and being member of a terrorist organisation.
CNN's Matthew Chance said the 15-year sentence was the maximum the court could impose under German law.
Prosecutors alleged he provided logistical support for the Hamburg al Qaeda cell that included lead hijacker Mohamed Atta, who piloted one of the two airliners that crashed into the World Trade Center.
Police blocked off the street in front of the Hamburg courthouse on Wednesday morning as dozens of journalists queued for tight security screening to enter the building.
El Motassadeq consistently denied the charges during his three-and-a-half-month trial and his lawyers were seeking an acquittal from the five-judge panel.
During the trial the defendant acknowledged he knew the six other alleged members of the Hamburg cell -- Atta plus two other pilots of the airliners, Ziad Jarrah and Marwan al-Shehhi; and logisticians Ramzi Binalshibh, Said Bahaji and Zakariya Essabar. But he said he knew nothing of their plans.
"I couldn't believe that people I knew could do something like that," el Motassadeq said in his closing statement last week. "I watched it on television and I was shocked... I can only hope that something like September 11 never happens again."
But witnesses testified that el Motassadeq, a slight, bearded man, was as radical as the rest of the group, talking of jihad -- holy war -- and his hatred of Israel and the United States.
The defendant himself admitted training in a camp run by Osama bin Laden -- the al Qaeda chief alleged by the U.S. to be the mastermind of the September 11 attacks -- in Afghanistan in 2000.
Prosecutors alleged el Motassadeq used his power of attorney over al-Shehhi's bank account to pay rent, tuition and utility bills, allowing the plotters to keep up the appearance of being normal students in Germany.
El Motassadeq argued he was simply providing an innocent service to friends and that he took weapons training in Afghanistan because he believed all Muslims should learn to shoot.
The defence tried several times unsuccessfully to obtain testimony by two of el Motassadeq's friends, Ramzi Binalshibh and Mohammed Haydar Zammar -- a lack of evidence that the lawyers say could be grounds for an appeal in case of a guilty verdict.
Binalshibh, a Yemeni suspect in U.S. custody, is believed to have been the Hamburg cell's key contact with al Qaeda. Zammar, an alleged al Qaeda recruiter in Hamburg, is in prison in Syria.
The court failed to get the men released to testify and German authorities refused to turn over their files on the two, saying transcripts of their interrogations were provided to them on condition they only be used for intelligence purposes.
Motassadeq, a member of a middle-class family, came to Germany in 1993 to study. By 1995, he was studying electrical engineering in Hamburg, where he is believed to have first met Atta no later than the following year.
Lawyers representing Americans who lost family members on September 11 had said they would appeal if el Motassadeq did not receive close to the maximum sentence. Family members are allowed to be co-plaintiffs under German law.
A journalist who observed the trial for CNN said the prosecution's job had made more difficult because of the circumstantial nature of the evidence. But there were some dramatic moments.
"Especially telling was the testimony of a witness who accused him of having said all Jews should burn and we will dance on their grave," said Sebastian Fastenau.
Family members of American victims became co-plaintiffs and testified in court, including Stephen Push, who lost his his wife in the September 11 attack on New York.
"One of the most disturbing things about the case was the discovery that the German authorities knew much about this al Qaeda cell years prior to the September 11 attack," he told CNN. "Just like the authorities in the United States -- the FBI and CIA -- they were aware of some of these individuals, have been tracking them and yet were not able to connect the dots, were not able to use that information to prevent the attacks."
Some lawyers had seen the trial as a test case for future al Qaeda prosecutions.
The trial did expose the difficulties of proving al Qaeda membership. What distinguishes a "terrorist organisation" from a criminal group and what constitutes membership?
"The legal demands set are very high. You need to show there is a hierarchical structure, that it had a purpose and continued for some time," German federal prosecutors told Reuters.
-- CNN Berlin Bureau Chief Stephanie Halasz contributed to this report
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