HAMBURG, 12 December 2003 — A German court yesterday ordered a Moroccan accused of supporting the Sept. 11 Al-Qaeda cell in Hamburg freed from custody based on new evidence that only the three Hamburg-based suicide hijackers and their alleged Al-Qaeda liaison were involved in the plot — a decision that could cast doubt on the only Sept. 11 conviction so far.
The court questioned the validity of the statement, purportedly by Ramzi Binalshibh, the Hamburg cell’s suspected key contact with Al-Qaeda, saying he had an interest in protecting the cell. But it said suspect Abdelghani Mzoudi, 31, had to be freed because there now was “a serious possibility” he knew nothing of the plot.
Lawyers for the only convicted Sept. 11 plotter worldwide, Mzoudi’s friend Mounir El Motassadeq, immediately called for his release, too.
The same court convicted El Motassadeq in February of 3,066 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization and sentenced him to the maximum 15 years in prison. An appeal is pending.
Mzoudi faces the same charges in his four-month-old trial. He was arrested in October 2002 on lesser charges of supporting a terror organization. However, federal prosecutors increased the charges after El Motassadeq’s conviction. Prosecutors allege Mzoudi helped the suicide hijackers with logistics — arranging apartments and concealing their absences from Germany.
The order to free Mzoudi was effective immediately, but prosecutors said they would appeal. Mzoudi did not react when the order to release him after 14 months in custody was announced. The decision came after the Federal Criminal Office, Germany’s equivalent of the FBI, submitted new evidence that it received last month suggesting that Mzoudi was not involved in the plot.
The agency did not identify the source of the statement. However Presiding Judge Klaus Ruehle said he was sure it was from Binalshibh. “The judges have many questions about the credibility of this information, but there is no possibility to verify Binalshibh’s statements,” Ruehle told the court. US and German authorities have refused to turn over full transcripts of the interrogation of Binalshibh, a Yemeni in US custody after his capture in Pakistan on the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
