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.