Germany Acquits Man of 9/11 Role

A German court acquitted a Moroccan man Thursday of involvement in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- an embarrassing setback for German prosecutors hampered by Washington’s refusal to share sensitive intelligence information.

Abdelghani Mzoudi was found not guilty of being an accessory to murder in the deaths of about 3,000 people at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. The 31-year-old electrical engineering student -- smiling slightly as the verdict was read -- was also acquitted of charges that he belonged to the Hamburg terrorist cell run by hijacker Mohamed Atta and others who had trained in Afghan camps.

Mzoudi was freed after Judge Klaus Ruehle dismissed a last-minute motion to introduce new evidence from a lawyer representing families of Sept. 11 victims. The lawyer, Andreas Schulz, said he was e-mailed information from the U.S. Department of Justice that would incriminate Mzoudi. But using the kind of cryptic language that characterized the five-month trial, Schulz said he was “not authorized” to disclose the e-mail to the court.

Ruehle’s statement to Mzoudi in the crowded courtroom Thursday hinted at the judge’s frustration at the lack of evidence presented by the prosecution. “Mr. Mzoudi, you are acquitted and this may be a relief to you, but it is no reason for joy,” Ruehle said. “You were acquitted not because the court was convinced of your innocence but because the evidence was not enough to convict you.”

The verdict means that one of the two men tried in Germany on charges of helping plot the Sept. 11 attacks will go free. The second man, Mounir Motassadeq, also a Moroccan, was convicted last year and sentenced to 15 years in prison. But legal experts believe that his case will probably be overturned on appeal because the evidence against him was almost identical to that presented against Mzoudi.

At critical turns in the trial, the prosecution was prevented by U.S. intelligence agencies from introducing evidence that might have detailed Mzoudi’s connection to the hijackers. The U.S. said it did not want such disclosures to jeopardize other terrorist investigations. Withholding the information was a blow to the Germans and underscored the difficulties in sharing intelligence.

“The U.S. probably has its reasons, but in the present situation it is incomprehensible that they don’t give us more information,” said Kay Nehm, Germany’s top federal prosecutor.

“The verdict is an embarrassment in the global fight against terrorism,” Elmar Thevesen, a terrorism expert, said on German radio. “The U.S. held back witnesses. The U.S. held back testimonies.”

Prosecutors alleged that Mzoudi, who trained in Osama bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan in 2000, provided logistical support to the Hamburg cell by securing apartments and providing cover for the hijackers as they made their way to the U.S. He also witnessed and signed Atta’s will.

Mzoudi asserted that he knew members of the cell but was unaware of a mission to crash jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The court was not convinced that the Hamburg cell plotted the hijackings -- which had to be proved if Mzoudi was to be convicted of membership in a terrorist group active in Germany. Before Sept. 11, 2001, it was not against German law to belong to a foreign terrorist organization such as Al Qaeda, meaning prosecutors had to prove the Hamburg cell was independent.

“There is no evidence that the Sept. 11 plot was planned in Hamburg by this group,” Ruehle said. “This trial did not show that the group in Hamburg had concrete plans to use planes as bombs already in 1999 [before] its members went to camps in Afghanistan.”

Prosecutors said they would appeal. “The court judged each detail separate from the other, and it did not evaluate the bigger picture,” lead prosecutor Walter Hemberger said.

A key moment in the case came Dec. 11 when Germany’s foreign intelligence agency informed the court that an Al Qaeda operative in U.S. custody suggested that Mzoudi was unaware of the cell’s intentions. The operative, whom the court identified as Ramzi Binalshibh, a leader in the cell arrested in Pakistan last year, told American authorities that only he and three others knew of the Sept. 11 plan: hijackers Atta, Ziad Samir Jarrah and Marwan Al-Shehhi.

The U.S. refused to allow Binalshibh to testify and did not grant German prosecutors access to his complete interrogation transcripts. The statements reportedly sketch a more intricate portrait of the hijackers and even suggest that Mzoudi may have been more than a peripheral player.

The lawyer for the victims’ families, Schulz, suggested that he had learned of such information from the Justice Department. But the evidence was not introduced Thursday, and Ruehle rejected Schulz’s motion to delay the verdict.

“U.S. authorities are following this trial closely and would immediately inform those involved if they planned to allow new evidence,” the judge said. “This loss of evidence cannot go against the defendant.”

“Many who have followed this trial in Germany and America will look upon this decision with incomprehension and bitterness,” Ruehle said after the verdict. “We should make clear that we at no point lost sight of the fact that this was about Sept. 11 -- one of the worst crimes in the history of mankind.”

Mzoudi’s fate is uncertain. His German visa has expired, and officials have said they will attempt to deport him to Morocco.

Times staff writer Fleishman reported from Berlin and special correspondent Laabs from Hamburg.