Lawyers bid to throw out 9/11 case

LAWYERS for the only man convicted over the September 11 attacks in the United States said yesterday they will call for the case against him to be thrown out when he returns to trial this month.

One of the attorneys for Moroccan student Mounir El Motassadeq, Josef Graessle-Muenscher, said he would argue that key witnesses in US custody had been tortured, making their testimony inadmissible in court.

Motassadeq, 30, was sentenced in February 2003 to 15 years in prison for his involvement in the so-called Hamburg cell that produced three of the 19 hijackers who attacked New York and Washington.

But he was released after a federal tribunal quashed the conviction in March, citing the absence of potentially crucial testimony by the alleged mastermind in Hamburg behind the plot, Ramzi Binalshibh. Binalshibh, from Yemen, is being held by US authorities in an undisclosed location.

Mr Graessle-Muenscher said he would argue that even if the US now agreed to provide detailed information from the interrogation of Binalshibh, it would be legally tainted.

“A fair trial is no longer possible because the important evidence is either lacking or contaminated,” he said. He alleged Binalshibh had probably been tortured since he was handed over to the US after his arrest in Pakistan in September 2002.