- KARLSRUHE, Germany (Reuters)
-- The only man convicted of helping the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers won
the right to a retrial Thursday after a successful appeal at Germany's
Supreme Court.
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- Mounir El Motassadeq, a Moroccan, was jailed for 15 years
in February 2003 for conspiring to murder nearly 3,000 people in the 2001
attacks on America and for membership of a terrorist organization, a German
al Qaeda cell which included three of the suicide pilots.
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- Presiding judge Klaus Tolksdorf told the court the state
could not abandon principles of justice, however grave the crime.
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- "The fight against terrorism cannot be a wild, uncontrolled
war," Tolksdorf said.
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- The successful appeal was likely to be seen by the United
States and German authorities as a major setback. German Interior Minister
Otto Schily had described the original conviction as an important success
in the war on terror.
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- The U.S. embassy declined to comment on the appeal ruling.
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- RELEASE DEMANDED
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- Motassadeq's lawyers successfully argued that new evidence
which secured the acquittal last month of Motassadeq's friend and fellow
Moroccan Abdelghani Mzoudi had made his conviction unreliable.
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- They said they would now demand Motassadeq, 29, be released
from custody in Hamburg pending his new trial.
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- Mzoudi's acquittal hinged on information, passed to the
court by German investigators, that neither he nor Motassadeq belonged
to a core group of plotters in Hamburg who had advance knowledge of the
suicide hijack plans.
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- The information was presumed to have come from U.S. questioning
of Ramzi bin al-Shaibah, a key al Qaeda suspect and member of the Hamburg
cell who is in U.S. custody. The judge said there was no way for the court
to assess its reliability but that it was obliged to give Mzoudi the benefit
of the doubt.
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- Motassadeq's lawyers have said a retrial could prompt
Washington to release more information about the attack plot, possibly
including bin al-Shaibah's testimony.
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- Germany's federal prosecutor Kay Nehm criticized the
United States last month for failing to make available fuller intelligence
from captured suspects that could help to secure convictions. He called
U.S. conduct "incomprehensible."
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- "VITAL COG"
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- Independent lawyers say Motassadeq unwittingly incriminated
himself at his trial with testimony that included an account of a trip
to an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. Motassadeq had said he had simply wanted
to learn to shoot, telling the court this was a requirement for all Muslims.
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- The prosecution's case had hinged on Motassadeq's close
friendships with six alleged plotters. He signed the will in 1996 of alleged
Hamburg cell ringleader Mohamed Atta, who smashed the first plane into
the World Trade Center.
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- He also transferred money for Marwan al-Shehhi, who piloted
the plane that struck the second World Trade Center tower.
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- Motassadeq insisted he had no advance knowledge of the
attack plot and did no more than help fellow Muslims living in a foreign
country.
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- Nearly 3,000 people were killed on Sept. 11, 2001, when
19 hijackers seized control of four airliners over the United States, slamming
two into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon. The fourth plane
crashed in rural Pennsylvania after passengers stormed the hijackers.
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- http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4496104
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