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''It was just religious duty, Mike...''
A Moroccan man accused of providing logistical support to the Sept. 11 hijackers told a court yesterday that he and other members of the alleged Hamburg terror cell trained in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan, but he said the training was for religious purposes. Being infidels, it's beyond our comprehension how training with explosives serves religious purposes... Mounir Motassadeq is the first person accused of direct involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to go on trial anywhere. He is charged with aiding and abetting in the killing of more than 3,000 people, but he said he knew nothing of plans for the attacks. "Nope. Nope. Not me. I'm pure as the driven snow, innocent as a babe... Hey! Get away from my detonator!" Motassadeq, a 28-year-old electrical engineering student, testified for four hours on the opening day of his trial. Motassadeq's attorneys had previously denied that he had attended al-Qaida camps, but Motassadeq said in court that he had spent a month in a camp outside Kandahar in July 2000. "Nope. Nope. Wudn't there. I was... ummm... someplace else..." "We have your credit card receipts. We have your used airline tickets. We have your stamped passport. We have pictures..." "Oh! You mean there!... Well, yeah, I was there, but I dint do nuttin'..." He said Mohamed Atta gave him detailed instructions on how to reach Afghanistan. He acknowledged that many of the other men accused of belonging to the cell - alleged pilots Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah and supporters Ramzi Bin al-shibh and Zakariya Essabar - went to camps in Afghanistan. He said he met Essabar outside the Kandahar camp nearly every day for prayers. They say he could pray a bullet through a man-size target at 600 yards... Motassadeq said he did not learn the camp was financed by Osama bin Laden until after he arrived there. He said he never saw bin Laden but was told by others that bin Laden visited regularly, sometimes staying overnight nearby. Motassadeq said the men from Hamburg never discussed becoming suicide bombers, which he said would be a violation of his faith. He said training in the camps was an end in itself, a fulfillment of religious duty. "No, no! It's against my religion for me to blow up. There are other guys who do that..." Motassadeq stressed several times that he was not asked by anybody to join the jihad when he left the camp after a month. "Nobody gave me any orders," he said. Yeah. Guess he was a reject. Let him sit in jug for about 40 years feeling rejected. That'll make the rest of the world a safer place... Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2002-10-23 |
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