Man Convicted of Role in 9/11 Terror

A Moroccan man, the first person to be tried for direct involvement in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was found guilty of being an accessory to 3,045 murders Wednesday and sentenced to the maximum possible 15 years in prison.

Judge Albrecht Mentz, presiding here over the last trial of his career, said Mounir Motassadeq was a founding member of the Hamburg terrorist cell that included suicide pilots Mohamed Atta, Ziad Jarrah and Marwan Al-Shehhi.

Motassadeq “backed the others up,” Mentz said, so the pilots could plan and execute the plot “to strike the U.S. with an attack in a dimension that was unknown before.”

The attacks could have happened without Motassadeq’s help, Mentz said, “but it was decisive [for this verdict] that he knew the plan and that he, which is even worse, wanted the result -- the deaths of thousands of people.”

Motassadeq, a 28-year-old engineering student, showed no emotion when Mentz -- heading a panel of five judges -- read the sentence in the nonjury trial. Motassadeq occasionally shook his head, apparently in disbelief, while Mentz explained the sentence.

Motassadeq denied any knowledge of the plot throughout the trial, which began in October. He admitted that the future hijackers were his friends and that he, like them, had attended an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.

The judge said the court was convinced beyond doubt that the defendant was aware of the plot. Mentz cited testimony from one of Motassadeq’s former roommates who said the Moroccan told him in 1999, “They will do something big again. The Jews will die, and we will dance on their graves.” The same witness testified that Motassadeq later introduced a fellow student as “our pilot.”

A second witness, a librarian, testified that Al-Shehhi stormed into her library one day in the spring of 1999 and said: “Something is going to happen. Thousands will die.” The librarian said she thought Al-Shehhi also made a reference to the World Trade Center.

The judge said the testimony from those two witnesses was crucial in proving that the cell was founded in early 1999, that it hatched the plot to use airliners as weapons in Hamburg and that the defendant knew of the plot from the start. Mentz said Atta, suspected of being the pilot of the first plane to strike the World Trade Center, was a driving force in the group but not the “all-deciding authoritarian leader.”

Motassadeq supported the cell, Mentz said, by using a power of attorney over Al-Shehhi’s bank account to pay rent, tuition and utility bills while the plotters were in Afghanistan or in flight school. Taking care of this paperwork was key to keeping the plot secret, Mentz said.

The judge said he found Motassadeq’s explanation that he trained in an Al Qaeda camp for purely religious reasons “unbelievable.” Mentz said Motassadeq acted as a messenger, flying to Afghanistan in May 2000 to tell Al Qaeda network superiors that the plot was launched and that Atta, Al-Shehhi and Jarrah were about to go to the U.S.

The defense team, in a statement, used the German word for “adventurous” in describing the judge’s conclusions. The lawyers said they will appeal.

They maintained throughout the trial that Motassadeq was deprived of testimony that could clear him because the U.S. Justice Department wouldn’t allow two key witnesses -- Ramzi Binalshibh and Mohammed Haydar Zammar -- to testify.

Binalshibh is believed to have been the key contact between the hijackers and their Al Qaeda managers in Afghanistan. He was arrested last year in Karachi, Pakistan, and is in U.S. custody. Zammar is alleged to have helped recruit the hijackers. He is in custody in Syria.

Not even summaries of their interrogations were allowed to be used as evidence.

During the course of the trial, Binalshibh emerged as the likely leader of the Hamburg cell, which was described by several witnesses as being far larger -- several dozen men -- than previously thought. Motassadeq described Binalshibh as extremely secretive about his own activities but always aware of what other men in the group of Hamburg Islamists were doing, when they traveled and where, and what they needed to have done.

Almost everyone who had significant contact with members of the group said that the men professed a personal commitment to jihad, or holy war, and spent years trying to determine how best to wage it. Casual acquaintances were sometimes frightened by their beliefs. Members of the group hectored acquaintances to join the cause, at one point beating one man because they declared him insufficiently devout. They pressured other men to grow beards, to dress in a prescribed manner and to make their wives convert to Islam.

It was also revealed during the trial that intelligence officials from the United States and Germany were well aware of the radical nature of the group long before Sept. 11. Several men in the group, including Motassadeq, were under surveillance at different times.

Mentz said U.S. authorities had cooperated extraordinarily in the trial. Americans who lost family members in the terrorist attacks were allowed, under German law, to join the trial as coplaintiffs. Their attorneys praised the verdict. Andreas Schulz, an attorney representing the families, said the verdict “shows a court can fight terror.”

Mentz said he tried unsuccessfully to engage Motassadeq in a dialogue, to make him reflect on his role in the more than 3,000 deaths. “But it’s never really too late,” Mentz said, looking directly at Motassadeq.

A second Moroccan man, Mzoudi Abdelghani, is also charged in Hamburg with supporting the hijackers. No date has been set for his trial.