Trial for Accused 9/11 Accomplice Ends

Attorneys for a man accused of giving logistical support to the Sept. 11 hijackers insisted Wednesday that he must be acquitted, charging in their final arguments that the case against him was built on “assumptions” and “speculations.”

Mounir Motassadeq, a 28-year-old university student from Morocco, is the first person to be tried for direct involvement in the terror conspiracy. He is charged with being an accessory to 3,045 murders in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Motassadeq acknowledged on the first day of his 4-month-long trial that he attended a jihad training camp in Afghanistan and knew three of the hijackers personally, but he has denied any direct knowledge of their plot.

Hans Leistritz, an attorney for Motassadeq, said the case presented by the prosecution contained few facts and was built on “assumptions, speculations, interpretations of the defendant’s beliefs and attitude.”

The defense claims that its case was hamstrung by the U.S. refusal to allow key witnesses to testify.

Prosecutors have asked for the maximum 15-year sentence for Motassadeq, saying he helped unleash “the most terrible terror attack in history.”

Motassadeq repeated to the court Wednesday that while he knew the suspected hijackers, he had no idea of their plans.

Judge Albrecht Mentz had urged him to make a statement about the attacks, “because the abyss between the Western world and the Muslims has deepened since then. And you never said anything about the fact that close friends of yours are responsible for the deed.”

Motassadeq said that when relatives of people who died in the attacks testified at the trial, “I was touched, just like anybody else here. But they looked at me as if I am responsible for all their sorrow.... That was very hard for me to bear, because I am innocent. I didn’t know the plan. I saw what happened that day on television myself and was shocked. I couldn’t believe that somebody could do such a thing. I can’t believe it today.”

More than 20 witnesses testified during the trial, which started in October. Several witnesses were friends of Motassadeq and the suicide pilots. They testified that Motassadeq had been close to the hijackers for years and was as radical in his beliefs as any of them.

Witnesses provided a much more detailed description of the three Hamburg-based hijackers -- Mohamed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah -- than had previously been made public.

The testimony produced the first confirmation that the three hijack pilots had attended Al Qaeda training camps. It also depicted a thriving radical Muslim scene in Hamburg in which the three men were avid participants.

The hijackers were well known within the scene, particularly Atta and another man whom witnesses described as a close associate, Ramzi Binalshibh. The latter is in U.S. custody and is one of two men whom defense attorneys were not allowed to call as witnesses because of U.S. opposition.

Binalshibh has claimed to be a coordinator of the Sept. 11 attacks and has said that he had intended to be one of the hijack pilots but could not obtain a U.S. visa.

Presumably, Binalshibh could have testified as to whether Motassadeq was aware of the plot.

The other man, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, is in Syrian custody and is suspected of recruiting the hijackers to Al Qaeda camps. The United States provided summaries of interrogations of Zammar and Binalshibh to German security services but insisted that the information not be disclosed.

Although testimony provided details about the activity of the men in the Hamburg cell, it left many central questions unanswered.

Defense attorney Hartmut Jacobi said: “Still today nobody knows, including the prosecutors, who planned what when. How come three pilots came from Hamburg and 16 hijackers from Saudi Arabia? Who planned the plot? Who coordinated it?”

Mentz said he will announce the verdict in the nonjury trial Wednesday. Defense attorneys have already said they intend to appeal the unavailability of Binalshibh and Zammar to the German Supreme Court.