9/11: Moroccan found guilty
2006-11-16 14:24
Karlsruhe - Germany's highest judicial court on Thursday found Moroccan national Mounir el Motassadeq guilty of accessory to murder in the September 11 2001 attacks in the United States.
The Federal Court of Justice ordered that Motassadeq face a court in the northern city of Hamburg for sentencing. He faced up to 15 years in jail.
Last year, Motassadeq was found guilty of the lesser charge of membership of a terrorist organisation and given a seven-year prison sentence.
But, federal prosecutors appealed that verdict, saying it was too lenient.
The decision on Thursday represented a stiffer penalty for the 32-year-old father of two children, who knew a handful of the September 11 attackers, including the supposed leader of the suicide cell, Mohammed Atta, while they were students together in Hamburg.
3 000 people killed
Presiding judge Klaus Tolksdorf said the new trial should decide "the appropriate sentence for the act and his guilt", but would not examine any fresh evidence or hear new witnesses.
The verdict was the latest step in a marathon legal process.
At his first trial, he was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2003 for abetting the murder of more than 3 000 people in the suicide hijackings on New York and Washington and for belonging to a terrorist organisation.
That verdict made him the first person to be convicted for playing a role in the attacks, but it was overturned by federal judges in March 2004 on the grounds that the United States authorities had refused to allow the court to question top al-Qaeda suspects being held in American custody.
In his retrial, the court found there was no evidence to show that Motassadeq had been directly involved in the September 11 attacks.
But, he was found to have handled bank transfers for members of the cell while they were pursuing flight training in the US and to have helped cover up their whereabouts.