9/11 pilots' friend: I'm innocent
POSTED: 10:54 a.m. EST, January 5, 2007 HAMBURG, Germany (AP) -- A Moroccan convicted as an accessory to murder in the September 11, 2001 attacks made an emotional declaration of innocence as a court opened hearings Friday to set his sentence.
Judges could sentence Mounir el-Motassadeq, a friend of three of the suicide pilots, to as long as 15 years in prison in the latest chapter of a tangled, five-year legal saga.
In November, a federal appeals court ruled that judges in Hamburg wrongly acquitted el Motassadeq in 2005 of direct involvement in the attacks, even as they sentenced him to seven years in prison for belonging to a terrorist group.
The appeals court convicted el-Motassadeq as an accessory to the murder of 246 passengers and crew members aboard the aircraft used in the attacks, and ordered the Hamburg state court to set a new sentence.
El-Motassadeq, 32, a slight man with a long beard who has always maintained he knew nothing of the hijackers' plans, appeared relaxed for much of Friday's session, but became agitated when presiding Judge Carsten Beckmann asked if he wanted to make a statement.
"Can anyone in this room swear by God that what it is in this verdict is the truth about me?" he asked.
"I swear by God that I did know the attackers were in America," he shouted in accented German. "I swear by God that I did not know what they wanted to do."
Defense attorney Ladislav Anisic called for the proceedings to be stopped and his client released on procedural grounds. He cited constitutional concerns over the way the panel hearing the case was chosen.
His colleague, Udo Jacob, argued that the hearings should at least be halted pending a decision by Germany's Federal Constitutional Court on an appeal filed last month against el Motassadeq's stiffened conviction. It is unclear when that court, Germany's highest, might consider the case.
Prosecutor Walter Hemberger said both requests were unfounded. Presiding judge Carsten Beckmann adjourned the hearing until Monday without ruling on them.
The court has scheduled sessions through February 5, but Beckmann said that, depending how his three-judge panel rules on the defense requests, both sides could make their sentencing requests on Monday -- and the court could deliver a verdict then.
Prosecutor Hemberger said before Friday's hearing that his sentence "will certainly be toward the upper end" of what is possible.
El-Motassadeq was a close friend of pilots Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah when they lived and studied in Hamburg.
The Moroccan has acknowledged training at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and that he was close to the three hijackers, but insists he knew nothing of their plans.
However, the federal appeals court said evidence showed el-Motassadeq knew that the hijackers planned to hijack and crash planes.
It found that his actions -- for example, transferring money, and helping the hijackers keep up the appearance of being regular university students by paying tuition and rent fees -- facilitated the attacks.
The federal court also said it was irrelevant to el-Motassadeq's guilt whether he knew of the plot's timing, dimension or targets.
"Every time, we get assertions and fantasy," el-Motassadeq said Friday of the verdict. "These are assertions, conclusions, that are not correct."
El-Motassadeq was convicted and sentenced to the maximum 15 years in prison in 2003, but that verdict was overturned by a federal court the following year -- largely because of lack of evidence from al Qaeda suspects in U.S. custody.
At a retrial that resulted in the current conviction, the U.S. provided limited summaries from the interrogation of, among others, Ramzi Binalshibh, a suspected liaison between the Hamburg hijackers and al Qaeda.
Jacob on Friday insisted that judges had been wrong to dismiss a statement from Binalshibh supporting el-Motassadeq's insistence that he knew nothing of the cell's plans. They had questioned both its credibility and its value as evidence.
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http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/01/05/germany.911.ap/index.html
