Hamburg Court Frees 9/11 Suspect

In an embarrassing setback that threatens the credibility of Germany’s terrorist investigations, a Hamburg judge Thursday released a Moroccan man from jail based on new evidence indicating he had no knowledge of Al Qaeda’s plans to carry out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Judge Klaus Ruehle ruled that new testimony “clearly exonerates” Abdelghani Mzoudi of being a member of the Hamburg cell led by Mohamed Atta, one of the 19 hijackers. Although Mzoudi knew the cell members and trained in terrorist camps, the judge said that did not mean the 31-year-old electrical engineering student participated in the plot.

The judge’s order does not stop Mzoudi’s four-month trial on charges of being an accessory to 3,066 murders stemming from the attacks on New York and Washington. If found guilty of providing support to Atta and other Al Qaeda plotters, Mzoudi could still face 15 years in prison. That’s much less than he would serve if convicted of belonging to a terrorist organization and having knowledge of a deadly attack.

The court’s surprise decision, which severely weakened the prosecution’s case, also threw into question the earlier conviction of another Moroccan man, and underscored the difficulties U.S. and German prosecutors face in divulging sensitive intelligence information in court.

Mzoudi’s release from jail came after testimony by an unidentified witness that suggested only four people constituted the Hamburg cell. Three of them were Atta and two other hijackers in the suicide attacks. The fourth was Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged Osama bin Laden lieutenant being held by U.S. authorities at an undisclosed location. Mzoudi did spend time in terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, but had no insight into the Sept. 11 plan, according to his lawyers.

“There is the serious possibility that Mzoudi was left out of the attack plans on purpose despite his links to the Hamburg group and despite his stay in Afghanistan and that his supportive actions were not consciously made,” Ruehle said. The judge added that there was not enough evidence to justify “urgent suspicion” that Mzoudi was in the cell’s inner circle.

The order to release Mzoudi came after Ruehle received a letter from German federal police containing summaries of an interrogation from the unspecified witness. The judge said he later concluded that the witness was most likely Binalshibh, who was arrested in September 2002 in Pakistan and turned over to the U.S.

Criminal prosecutors in the Mzoudi case had long urged German intelligence investigators to release transcripts of Binalshibh’s statements to provide a fuller understanding of the case.

But the investigators were bound by demands from the U.S. government not to disclose the contents of the Binalshibh interrogations. The dilemma highlights the complexities and dual purposes that often exist in terrorist investigations between intelligence services from the U.S. and other nations. The Mzoudi trial also highlights the ambiguous nature of Al Qaeda and shows how difficult it is to prove that someone, even though he trained in Afghan camps and knew the Hamburg cell, had knowledge of the Sept. 11 plot.

Some legal experts following the trial found it puzzling that the judge would release Mzoudi based on statements by Binalshibh, whom the prosecution referred to as an untrustworthy witness. The suggestion that the Hamburg cell consisted of four members contradicts other evidence that the group was much wider and included fugitives such as Said Bahaji and Zakariya Essabar and Mohammed Haydar Zammar, a Syrian now in custody who allegedly helped recruit Atta and the other hijackers.

The trial so far has revealed that Mzoudi was a close friend of the plotters who at times lived with them and organized their apartments and money. He was a witness to Atta’s will and can be seen in one video singing radical Islamic songs about jihad. At the time of his arrest, police were investigating Mzoudi for involvement in another extremist group.

The outcome of Mzoudi’s trial is likely to affect Mounir Motassadeq, a Moroccan and the first suspect to be convicted anywhere in the world for involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks. The charges against Motassadeq closely mirrored those against Mzoudi: Motassadeq was found guilty in a Hamburg court in February of aiding the hijackers with logistical and financial support. Immediately after Ruehle’s decision on Thursday, Motassadeq’s lawyer, Gerhard Strate, filed a motion to overturn the conviction and have his client set free.

A legal expert following the Hamburg cell trials said the new evidence raised the prospect that the Motassadeq and Mzoudi cases may “collapse.”

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Times staff writer Fleishman reported from Berlin and special correspondent Laabs from Hamburg. Times staff writer Sebastian Rotella in Paris contributed to this report.