- BERLIN (Reuters) -- Key evidence
in the planned retrial of a September 11 suspect in Germany was probably
obtained by U.S. authorities under torture, his lawyer alleged on Wednesday
as he called for the case to be thrown out.
-
- Lawyer Josef Graessle-Muenscher said he would use the
torture charge to press for the case against Moroccan Mounir El Motassadeq
to be dropped as soon as the retrial gets under way in Hamburg next Tuesday.
-
- "I will say that we can't conduct fair proceedings
because the evidence we need comes from the United States, it was obtained
under torture and it must be rejected," he told Reuters in a telephone
interview.
-
- President Bush has condemned torture as alien to American
values and said he has never ordered its use, but Washington has faced
an international outcry over its treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay
in Cuba and the abuse of Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib jail near Baghdad.
-
- The German court case revolves around Ramzi bin al-Shaibah,
a captured al Qaeda leader who knew Motassadeq in Hamburg. Both were part
of a circle of Arab students there which included Mohamed Atta, Marwan
al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, three of the suicide hijackers who led the attacks
of September 11, 2001.
-
- Germany has asked the United States to provide information
from the interrogation of bin al-Shaibah, who was captured in Pakistan
in 2002, which could help secure a conviction in the Motassadeq trial.
-
- INADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE
-
- But Graessle-Muenscher said any such evidence would be
inadmissible because of the likelihood it had been extracted under torture.
-
- He said he would argue this in court using a variety
of material, including documents released by the Bush administration as
well as accounts of prisoner treatment at Guantanamo Bay.
-
- U.S. documents declassified in June showed that tactics
including 20-hour interrogations, light deprivation, removal of clothing
and the use of dogs to frighten prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were approved
by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in December 2002 but rescinded the
following month.
-
- Of these "Pentagon Papers," Graessle-Muenscher
said: "I have got them before me and I will certainly cite them."
-
- He said he did not need to raise the example of Abu Ghraib
because the Guantanamo case was more relevant to the trial and there was
a "strong presumption" that al Qaeda prisoners like bin al-Shaibah
would have been treated in similar fashion.
-
- He also noted news reports that another top al Qaeda
figure, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, had been strapped down and pushed under
water during interrogation to make him believe he might drown.
-
- Graessle-Muenscher said he hoped the court would set
a precedent which would send a strong message. "The state which tortures
must be told that torture doesn't pay."
-
- Motassadeq became the first person anywhere to be convicted
in connection with September 11 when he was sentenced to 15 years' jail
in 2003 for aiding and abetting several thousand murders and belonging
to a terrorist organization.
-
- But he won an appeal in March and was freed the following
month pending the new trial -- to the irritation of Washington, which called
him "a dangerous guy." A friend and fellow-Moroccan, Abdelghani
Mzoudi, was acquitted of similar charges in February.
-
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