The lawyer defending an accused accomplice of the September 11 suicide pilots at his Hamburg retrial has been critically injured in a motorbike accident, throwing into question how the case will proceed.

A German court has granted Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder an order halting the publication of a crime novel in which a chancellor is shot in Schroeder’s home city.

THE only September 11 suspect ever convicted was freed by a German court yesterday pending the outcome of his retrial on charges of aiding the suicide pilots.