The man accused of managing the ”kitty” for the September 11 pilots, went on trial in Hamburg yesterday acknowledging that he had lied to investigators.
In the first trial of a suspected member of the conspiracy, a 28-year-old Moroccan, Mounir el Motassadeq, was indicted for belonging to a terrorist organisation and being an accessory to 3 045 murders.
After his arrest last year, Mr Motassadeq denied to police that he had been to Osama bin Laden’s guerrilla training camps in Afghanistan. But soon after he began testifying yesterday, the bearded engineering student said he had last seen Mohammed Atta, the alleged leader of the September 11 plot, in May 2000 ”when I planned to go to Pakistan, Afghanistan.”
The admission strengthened a central assertion of the prosecution — that Mr Motassadeq was trained for his role in the plot at an al-Qaida’s training camp between May and August 2000.
In later evidence, the defendant claimed that he only learnt on his way to the camp, outside Kandahar, that it was linked to Osama bin Laden.
”I learned Bin Laden was responsible for the camp and had been at the camp sometimes,” he said. But, he added: ”I didn’t know that beforehand and I didn’t meet him.”
Mr Motassadeq said he had learned to use a Kalashnikov rifle and did fitness training, but had not participated in training on the use of explosives. He insisted he had not discussed the trip with members of the Hamburg cell, but said he met two other suspected members during his three-week stay – fellow Moroccans Zakariya Essabar and a former flatmate, Abdelghani Mzoudi, the only other September 11 suspect in custody in Germany.
His lawyers said the visit to Afghanistan proved nothing and that thousands of others had been to the camps without turning to violence.
The indictment, read out to a hushed court sitting behind steel doors, maintained that Mr Motassadeq
”was aware of the objectives of the organisation, aimed at the perpetration of terrorist attacks, and assisted in the planning and committing of those attacks by means of a great number of activities.”
But, when asked by the presiding judge, Albrecht Mentz, whether there had been any indication from his friend Atta of his plans, Mr Motassadeq replied: ”Suicide attacks were never discussed. In my opinion, that is not a solution … Suicide bombers are not martyrs. Even in war, there are rules.”
He added: ”Perhaps Atta was of a different opinion … But Atta never spoke about any attacks.”
The Moroccan’s evidence was delivered for the most part in good German. But increasingly frequently he broke off to consult an Arabic interpreter sitting at his side. He faces a life sentence if found guilty. A panel of five judges – four men and one woman – has been entrusted with Germany’s most important terrorist trial since the days of the far left Red Army Faction a quarter of a century ago.
Journalists and others attending the trial were given detailed security checks at the entrance. They watched the proceedings through a bullet-proof glass screen topped by an expanse of netting.
The nub of the case against Mr Motassadeq is that — in the words of Germany’s chief prosecutor, Kay Nehm — he was the man who ”held the fort” back in Hamburg while his cronies staged the world’s biggest terrorist attack.
When Atta and two of the other pilots, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, left Hamburg in 2000 to train at flight schools in Florida, Mr Motassadeq stayed behind and fed money to them through an account held by al-Shehhi.
”That account was the ‘kitty’ of the ‘Hamburg cell’ and served to meet the expenses of the terrorist activities of the organisation”, said prosecuting counsel, Walter Hemberber, as he read the indictment.
Mr Motassadeq admitted that he had close ties with the members of the cell, but not that he formed part of it.
Atta, he said, had helped him to find a flat together with another Moroccan arrested in Hamburg this month and charged with aiding and abetting a terrorist organisation. He had often talked to Atta, but never heard a word from him about the group’s plans.
Among the hurdles facing the prosecution is explaining why, if he knew in advance of September 11, Mr Motassadeq did not flee the country before the hue and cry went up. The plot’s other alleged logistician, a German of Moroccan extraction, Said Bahaji, caught a plane to Pakistan a few days before September. Two other suspected members of the cell were with him.
Mr Motassadeq came to Germany in 1993 to study. Two years later, he was admitted to the technical university of Hamburg-Harburg to read electrical engineering.
It was there that he met Atta, then a PhD student in the town planning department. In Hamburg, Mr Motassadeq also met his wife Maria, a Russian convert to Islam.
At the end of the hearing four men sitting in the public gallery were led away for questioning by police. A spokesoman for the court said they had been observed making signals to one another.
Another alleged member of the September 11 conspiracy, Zacarias Moussaoui, has been brought before a court in the US, but is not due to go on trial until the beginning of next year. More than 160 witnesses are due to testify at the Hamburg trial, which is scheduled to last three months. – Guardian Newspapers 2002