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Lawyers for Accused Moroccan Eye Acquittal
HAMBURG, Germany (AP) - Lawyers for a Moroccan charged with aiding the Sept. 11 hijackers argued Monday that convicting their client despite the United States' refusal to allow key al-Qaida suspects to testify in his trial would hand a victory to Osama bin Laden.
Perhaps it's because I don't understand the German legal system that I think that statement makes no sense.
Mounir el Motassadeq is charged in Germany with more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization. Prosecutors maintain he helped pay tuition and bills for members to the so-called Hamburg al-Qaida cell, allowing them to live as students as they plotted the attacks. Last week, authorities demanded he receive the maximum sentence of 15 years.

His lawyer, Ladislav Anisic, criticized the lack of direct testimony from witnesses including Ramzi Binalshibh, a key Sept. 11 suspect in U.S. custody. Anisic said that summaries of interrogations provided by U.S. officials may have been "filtered" or obtained under torture and urged the court to give his client the benefit of the doubt. "Don't let Osama bin Laden win by neglecting the principles of the state of law," Anisic said, as the yearlong trial drew toward a close.
"Instead, let him win by blowing stuff up!"
El Motassadeq, 31, acknowledges that he was close to the three suicide hijackers who lived in the north German city, but maintains he did not know about their plans to attack the World Trade Center in New York in 2001.
"No, no, certainly not!"
He was convicted in 2003 of the same charges, but the verdict was thrown out last year and a retrial ordered after an appeals court ruled el Motassadeq was unfairly denied testimony from al-Qaida suspects in U.S. custody. The court is expected to deliver its verdict on Friday, and Anisic said he would appeal any conviction.

According to statements provided for the retrial by the U.S. Justice Department, Binalshibh said he and suicide pilots Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah alone comprised the Hamburg cell. Prosecutors say Binalshibh, who was detained in Pakistan on the first anniversary of the attacks, probably lied to protect coconspirators.
Posted by: Steve White 2005-08-16
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=126905