HAMBURG, 15 August 2003 — Germany launched its second Sept. 11 trial yesterday, charging a Moroccan man with helping the suicide plane hijackers in the 2001 attacks on America and colluding in the murder of over 3,000 people.
Abdelghani Mzoudi, a 30-year-old electrical engineering student, is charged with 3,066 counts of aiding and abetting murder and membership of a terrorist organization, the Hamburg-based Al-Qaeda cell that led the attacks on US cities.
In the second trial anywhere of a Sept. 11 suspect, Mzoudi, arrested in October 2002, could face the same 15-year jail term the Hamburg High Court handed to fellow Moroccan Mounir El Motassadeq for similar charges in February.
“From early summer 1999 until Sept. 11, 2001, he was a member of a terrorist organization and helped the suspected terrorists commit murder and other crimes,” prosecutor Matthias Krauss told the court as he read the indictment against Mzoudi.
Prosecutors say Mzoudi, like Motassadeq, signed the will of the leader of the Hamburg Al-Qaeda cell, Mohamed Atta, who US officials say flew the first plane into the World Trade Center.
Also like Motassadeq, they say Mzoudi handled money for a plotter, helped cover for the absence of others while they were in Afghanistan or taking flying lessons in the United States and trained at an Al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan himself.
But unlike Motassadeq, who unwittingly incriminated himself with testimony that included a description of his stay in Afghanistan, Mzoudi only read from a short statement and did not refer to any travel or mention any links to the hijackers. Mzoudi, a short man with a thick black beard, gave a brief account of his life, responding to questions from judges in a courtroom separated from the public gallery by thick glass.
Flanked by his lawyers and a translator, he switched from Arabic to broken German, checking his prepared notes to describe his childhood in Marrakesh and his move to Germany in 1993.
“My mother brought me up to be honest, not to steal or to kill,” Mzoudi told the five-judge panel led by Klaus Ruehle.
Michael Rosenthal, one of two defense lawyers, said prosecutors would first need to prove the facts of the attacks before determining whether Mzoudi was an accessory to them.
The defense lawyers argue, as did those defending Motassadeq, that Mzoudi did little more than help fellow Muslims living abroad and say his paying of student fees and other bills for hijackers was in no way central to the Sept. 11 plot.
