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HAMBURG, Germany (Reuters) - A Moroccan accused of helping the September 11 suicide hijackers received training in encryption techniques at an al Qaeda camp in Iran in 1997, an Iranian defector said on Friday. But his testimony to a German court was promptly undercut by comments from Germany's intelligence services, who questioned his credibility and said his evidence was worth very little. Hamid Reza Zakeri, the cover name of a man who says he worked in Iranian intelligence and defected in 2001, was testifying toward the end of Germany's second major trial of suspected members of al Qaeda's Hamburg cell....

HAMBURG, Germany - A Moroccan convicted as an accessory to murder in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was sentenced Monday to the maximum 15 years in prison, minutes after telling the son of a woman killed that day "my future is ruined." A federal appeals court convicted Mounir el Motassadeq, a friend of three of the suicide pilots, in November of knowingly helping the hijackers and sent the case to a state court in Hamburg for sentencing. Just before Monday's verdict, the 32-year-old defendant spoke with an American whose mother died on board one of the planes that crashed into...

KARLSRUHE, Germany - A Moroccan man was convicted Thursday of acting as an accessory to murder in the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks by a federal appeals court that ruled that he played a direct role in the plot. Mounir El Motassadeq was a close friend of hijackers Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah when they lived and studied in the northern port city of Hamburg. The Federal Court of Justice found that a Hamburg court decided wrongly last year to acquit el Motassadeq of direct involvement in the attacks, even as it convicted him of membership in a...

KARLSRUHE, Germany (Reuters) - Germany's highest court of appeals on Thursday ordered that a Moroccan friend of the September 11 hijackers must face a third trial on charges of aiding the deadly 2001 attacks on the United States. Judge Klaus Tolksdorf, who has said that Mounir El Motassadeq clearly knew his acquaintances from Hamburg were planning plane attacks, ordered the retrial. Motassadeq was convicted last year of belonging to a terrorist organisation and sentenced to 7 years in prison, but cleared of the more serious charge of abetting mass murder. He was unexpectedly freed from a Hamburg prison in February...

Ressam at times defiant in 2 days of questioning By Mike Carter Seattle Times staff reporter After more than a year of cooperating with federal prosecutors, Ahmed Ressam has become a sometimes difficult and defiant government witness. Ressam was at times surly and evasive during two days of closed-door questioning this week in Seattle by German lawyers who need his help prosecuting Mounir el-Motassadeq, a Moroccan accused of helping the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers. Ressam, convicted of conspiracy to commit an act of international terrorism, might be endangering his deal with federal prosecutors to serve as few as 27 years...

According to The New York Times (8 July 2003): "the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks said today that its work was being hampered by the failure of executive branch agencies, especially the Pentagon and the Justice Department, to respond quickly to requests for documents and testimony." Several alternative media have joined the bandwagon. George W. Bush is accused of obstructing the investigation...Former Jersey governor Thomas Kean, the commission's chairman is presented as an honest and uncompromising individual, who is courageously confronting the US government: "Without greater cooperation, Kean said, ''we cannot do the job we are supposed...

don't have time to elaborate - see for yourself. This guy was the one Able Danger team briefed who decided it was not worthy of inclusion into the 9/11 report or even to the ears of comittee members since it did not fit their conclusions about Atta. THIS NEEDS TO P*O*P!

HAMBURG, Germany, Aug. 10 — A German court today began a retrial of Mounir el-Motassadeq, the only person convicted of involvement in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, with the disclosure that the United States will for the first time share evidence about the plot. Mr. Motassadeq's conviction was thrown out in March by an appeals court, which said that critical evidence had been withheld by American authorities. After having been sentenced to 15 years in prison, Mr. Motassadeq was freed in April. The decision by the United States to offer limited cooperation to the Germans introduces a combustible element to...

DUESSELDORF, Germany -- A Jordanian man who claims he was Osama bin Laden's bodyguard was questioned by U.S. officials who are considering having him testify at the Virginia trial of terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, the man's attorney said Thursday. Shadi Abdellah, 28, sentenced last November to four years in prison for helping plan terror attacks in Germany, was granted early release last month after serving more than half the time, including in pretrial custody. While in prison, he served as a government witness in several trials, including that of his alleged co-plotters in the German cell of the Tawhid and...

HAMBURG/MADRID, 27 October 2004 — A witness at the retrial of a Moroccan charged with involvement in the Sept.11, 2001 attacks in the United States said yesterday he heard him discussing the plans and had alerted German police and intelligence services. The court in Hamburg in northern Germany heard the testimony of the man, a 42-year-old restaurant owner, over the objections of the defendant, Mounir El-Motassadeq. In February 2003 Motassadeq became the first and only person to be found guilty in connection with the Sept. 11 plane bombings in New York and Washington. He was given a 15-year-prison term for...

BERLIN -- A Saudi diplomat met a member of the Hamburg, Germany, terrorist cell shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., according to a confidential police report.The diplomat, Muhammed Fakihi, is said to have met Mounir el-Motassadeq when the 29-year-old Moroccan was contemplating fleeing Germany. A few days after the November meeting, Mr. Motassadeq was arrested. This year, he was convicted of accessory to murder in 3,066 cases and of membership in a terrorist organization. He is the only person world-wide to have been convicted for participating in the attacks.The alleged meeting is detailed in a two-page...

<p>In the days after Sept. 11, 2001, Sami Omar al-Hussayen led fellow Muslims as they joined an emotion-charged candlelight march remembering the dead. The Saudi graduate student in computer science at the University of Idaho helped organize a blood drive for victims. He issued a press release on behalf of the Muslim Students Association, stating that the small town of Moscow's Muslims "condemn in the strongest terms possible what are apparently vicious acts of terrorism against innocent citizens."</p>

A wedding video shot in a Hamburg mosque has been broadcast for the first time and shows grainy scenes of Sept. 11 al-Qaida suicide pilots celebrating with other alleged plotters, possibly including suspects still not formally identified. The video of the October 1999 wedding of Said Bahaji being celebrated in a large room at the al Quds mosque suspected as a recruiting center for al-Qaida operatives has been in the hands of investigators since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. In the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks, the Bahaji wedding video provided investigators critical...

German Court Jails 9/11 Conspirator for 15 Years Wed Feb 19, 1:00 PM ET By Philip Blenkinsop HAMBURG, Germany (Reuters) - A German court convicted a Moroccan Wednesday of aiding the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackers and sentenced him to the maximum possible 15-year jail term in the first trial of an attack conspirator. Student Convicted of Aiding 9/11 Murders Mounir El Motassadeq, 28, a slightly built electrical engineering student, was convicted of being an accessory to the murder of 3,066 people in the hijack plane attacks on the United States, presiding judge Albrecht Mentz said. Mentz said Motassadeq had...

German prosecutors are demanding a 15 year prison sentence for a Moroccan man on trial for involvement in the September 11th terrorist attacks. Mounir El Motassadeq is charged with membership of a terrorist organisation and with being an accessory to the murder of the more than 3,000 people who died in the attacks. Prosecutors say the 28-year-old student was a member of the al-Qaeda cell in Hamburg. His responsibilities included transferring money from bank accounts to pay for the flying lessons taken by some of the hijackers. Mr El Motassadeq denies the charges. The trial in the German city of...

HAMBURG, Germany (AP) — Their voices quavering as they told how their loved ones died on Sept. 11, five Americans on Thursday confronted the first suspect to stand trial for the attacks and demanded harsh punishment for ``the puppets of Osama bin Laden.'' Mounir el Motassadeq, an alleged member of the al-Qaida cell that included lead hijacker Mohamed Atta, listened intently but showed no emotion as the men and women painfully relived their experiences in Hamburg state court. Led by Stephen Push, whose wife was killed in the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, more than 20 relatives have joined...

HAMBURG, Germany (Reuters) - The first suspected Sept. 11 plotter to stand trial told a German court on Wednesday that he had contacted alleged radicals in Saudi Arabia only to seek guidance on Islamic theological issues. Moroccan student Mounir El Motassadeq is charged with serving as the paymaster of the al Qaeda cell in Hamburg, accused of masterminding the hijacked-aircraft attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001. German officials had testified that they had traced calls from Motassadeq to a radical group in Saudi Arabia. "As you know, I am a devout Muslim," Motassadeq, dressed in...

HAMBURG, Germany (AP) — An attorney for the first Sept. 11 suspect to face trial asked Tuesday for several witnesses to be recalled, saying he wants to press them on apparent inconsistencies in their testimony. The request came as the Hamburg state court tried to move toward wrapping up testimony in the trial of Mounir el Motassadeq, accused of providing logistical support to the Hamburg-based al-Qaida cell that included Sept. 11 suicide pilots Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah. The 28-year-old Moroccan faces a possible life sentence if convicted on charges of membership in a terrorist organization and more...

EINDHOVEN, The Netherlands - A member of the Hamburg terrorist cell that planned the Sept. 11 terror attacks visited this southern Dutch town a number of times before the attacks, said German and Dutch authorities. The Dutch secret service also confirmed yesterday that German authorities were investigating the trail of money that flowed through here from Saudi Arabia to finance possible terrorism operations. A spokesman in the German federal prosecutor's office declined to comment, and it is not clear whether a link has been established between the suspected Hamburg cell member, Mounir el-Motassadeq, who is on trial in Germany, and...