Moroccan found guilty of aiding Sept 11 hijackers

A Moroccan student was today convicted of being an accessory in the murder of more than 3,000 September 11 victims and helping support the Hamburg-based terror cell.

He was jailed for the maximum 15 years, concluding the first trial anywhere of a suspect in the al-Qaida terror attacks on the United States.

The Hamburg state court found Mounir el Motassadeq, 28, guilty of membership in a terrorist organisation for organising logistics for the al-Qaida cell that included lead hijacker Mohamed Atta and two other suicide pilots.

El Motassadeq acknowledged knowing six other alleged members of the Hamburg cell – Atta and two other suicide pilots, Ziad Jarrah and Marwan al-Shehhi and logisticians Ramzi Binalshibh, Said Bahaji and Zakariya Essabar. But he said he knew nothing of their plans.

“I couldn’t believe that people I knew could do something like that,” el Motassadeq said in his closing statement last week.

“I watched it on television and I was shocked ... I can only hope that something like September 11 never happens again.”

But witnesses testified that el Motassadeq, a slight, bearded man, was as radical as the rest of the group, talking of jihad – holy war – and his hatred of Israel and the United States.

The defendant himself admitted training in one of Osama bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan in 2000.

Prosecutors allege el Motassadeq used his power of attorney over al-Shehhi’s bank account to pay rent, tuition and utility bills, allowing the plotters to keep up the appearance of being normal students in Germany.

El Motassadeq argued he was simply providing an innocent service to friends and that he took weapons training in Afghanistan because he believed all Muslims should learn to shoot.

The prospect of el Motassadeq’s imprisonment in Germany raised security fears even before the verdict. Terrorists might attempt hijackings or kidnappings to free him, said Bavaria’s top security official, Interior Minister Guenter Beckstein.

The Hamburg case, coupled with a possible Iraq war, has led some German authorities to step up surveillance of likely suspects who might be planning attacks, though there is no evidence of any specific threats for now, Beckstein said.

Germany’s federal anti-crime agency said no nationwide measures were being taken, but the states were free to increase security.

“We gather information regarding the level of danger from national and international sources and pass on anything that is relevant to the state police,” said Dirk Buechner, spokesman for the Federal Criminal Office.

El Motassadeq’s lawyers tried several times unsuccessfully to obtain testimony by two of his friends, Ramzi Binalshibh and Mohammed Haydar Zammar – a lack of evidence that the lawyers say could be grounds for an appeal in case of a guilty verdict.

Binalshibh, a Yemeni suspect in US custody, is believed to have been the Hamburg cell’s key contact with al-Qaida. Zammar, an alleged al-Qaida recruiter in Hamburg, is in prison in Syria.

The court could not get the men released to testify and German authorities refused to turn over their files on the two, saying transcripts of their interrogations were provided to them on condition they only be used for intelligence purposes.

Lawyers representing Americans who lost family members on September 11 said they would appeal if el Motassadeq does not receive close to the maximum sentence, The family members are allowed to be co-plaintiffs under German law.

El Motassadeq, the son of a middle-class family, went to Germany in 1993. By 1995, he was studying electrical engineering in Hamburg, where he is believed to have first met Atta no later than the following year.