|
Lawyer To Appeal Custody Order Against 9/11 Terrorist Motassadeq
 The lawyer for convicted terrorist Mounir al-Motassadeq said Saturday he would lodge an appeal against his client's detention for assisting the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Motassadeq, 32, was arrested on Friday when judges at the high court in Karlsruhe cancelled his bail, one day after the same court convicted him but referred the case to a lower court for sentencing. Calling the detention order "incomprehensible," lawyer Ladislav Anisic said he would file a complaint with Germany's constitutional court. Motassadeq, a Moroccan student, had been free on bail but under police monitoring since February as the German courts reviewed his case. He had been given seven years in jail last year for being a member of the Hamburg terrorist cell that provided three 9/11 pilots. On Thursday, German High Court judges added a second conviction: for being an accessory to the murder of 246 occupants of the hijacked planes that crashed in New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania. Anisic said his client had fulfilled all the bail requirements in the past and there was no danger of him fleeing the country. Judges in Karlsruhe said the fact that Motassadeq's wife and offspring had left Germany for Morocco created an increased risk that he would try to leave Germany before a sentencing hearing that was likely to be "to his disadvantage." He was arrested at his Hamburg apartment on Friday evening "without any difficulty," said a police source. Motassadeq has been in and out of Hamburg jails since he was first detained the month after the 2001 attacks, when he claimed he had no advance knowledge of the strikes. Posted by: Fred 2006-11-19 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=172465 |