Court convicts friend of 9/11 hijackers

A GERMAN federal appeals court yesterday convicted a friend of three of the September 11 suicide pilots of accessory to murder for his role in their plot and sent the case back to a lower court for sentencing.

In a short statement, presiding Judge Klaus Tolksdorf said a Hamburg court’s decision to acquit Mounir el Motassadeq on thousands of counts of accessory to murder had been “changed” and that the appeals court had found him guilty.

El Motassadeq, currently sentenced to seven years in prison for membership of a terrorist organisation, now faces a total possible sentence of 15 years.

“We won, I’m ecstatic,” said Dominic Puopolo, whose mother died in one of the planes that struck the World Trade Center.

In the Federal Court of Justice ruling, Judge Tolksdorf said el Motassadeq, 32, had been found guilty of 246 counts of accessory to murder — representing the people who died in the planes in the September 11 attacks.

The ruling implied that the court found that there was at least enough evidence that el Motassadeq knew Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah planned to hijack planes, even if he did not have specific knowledge of their targets.

Defence lawyer Ladislav Anisic said depending on the new sentence, he might appeal el Motassadeq’s case to Germany’s highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court.

In 2003 El Motassadeq became the first person convicted anywhere in the world on 9/11-related charges. He was sentenced to the maximum 15 years in prison.