KARLSRUHE, Germany, 5 March 2004 — A German court yesterday overturned the world’s only conviction for the Sept. 11 attacks and ordered a retrial for a Moroccan found guilty last year of aiding the Hamburg cell of suicide hijackers.
Mounir El Motassadeq’s conviction on more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization was flawed because the lower court failed to properly consider the absence of evidence from a key witness who is in US custody, the Federal Criminal Court ruled. The jailed 29-year-old’s case now returns to court in Hamburg. “The case is to be sent back to another panel of judges at the Hamburg court for a new trial and decision,” Presiding Judge Klaus Tolksdorf said in reading the verdict. But he said, “The defendant El Motassadeq is certainly far removed from being clear of suspicion.”
El Motassadeq is serving a maximum 15-year prison sentence after the Hamburg court convicted him in February 2003 of giving logistical support to the Hamburg-based Al-Qaeda cell that included Sept. 11 suicide hijackers Mohamed Atta, Marwan A-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah.
After the appeal ruling, El Motassadeq’s lawyers said they would ask the Hamburg court to free the electrical engineering student from custody. El Motassadeq did not attend the session, but one of his lawyers grinned as the verdict was read out in the court in the southern city of Karlsruhe.
El Motassadeq’s lawyers argued he was denied a fair trial because the United States refused to allow testimony by Ramzi Binalshibh, thought to be the Hamburg cell’s key contact with Al-Qaeda.
Binalshibh was captured in Pakistan and is in US custody.
