Court Told of Saudi Links to Hamburg Cell
BERLIN — A raid on the apartment of an alleged member of the Hamburg cell that led the Sept. 11 attacks turned up the business card of a diplomat from the Saudi Embassy in Berlin, and Saudi officials have not responded to German requests to explain how the defendant came to have the card, a German police officer testified Tuesday.
Joerg Klose said that the Moroccan defendant, Mounir Motassadeq, also made repeated calls to Saudi Arabia from Hamburg and that German intelligence had traced the calls to Islamic radicals in the kingdom.
Motassadeq, 28, an electrical engineering student, is charged with more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization.
Prosecutors allege that he played an important back-room role, in particular by funneling money to the hijackers when they were at flight school in the United States.
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