Germany To Release Jailed Friend Of 9/11 Hijackers

[Gold9472]

Germany to release jailed friend of 9/11 hijackers

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/BAT001250.htm

07 Feb 2006 16:38:02 GMT

BERLIN, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Mounir El Motassadeq, a Morrocan man convicted in August of membership in a terrrorist organisation and sentenced to seven years in prison, will be released early, an official in the Hamburg Justice Ministry said on Tuesday.

"I can confirm ... that he will be released," the official told Reuters.

Motassadeq was a friend of three of the Sept. 11, 2001 suicide pilots.

Germany's Federal Constitutional Court said in a statement that it had upheld an appeal against Motassadeq's conviction.

[Gold9472]

Germany frees '9/11 link' convict

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4690712.stm

2/7/2006

A German court has ordered the release of a Moroccan convicted of belonging to a terrorist cell that included three of the 11 September suicide hijackers.

Mounir al-Motassadek, 31, was sentenced in Hamburg last August to seven years in jail following a year-long retrial.

But Germany's Federal Constitutional Court said on Tuesday it had upheld an appeal against his conviction and had now ordered his early release.

No more details were given of the reason for the higher court's decision.

The court in Hamburg had ruled there was no proof that Motassadek knew about the 11 September 2001 plot.

[Gold9472]

German court frees man convicted for 9/11 links
Moroccan was sentenced to seven years in Germany

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11218796/from/RS.2/

Updated: 11:46 a.m. ET Feb. 7, 2006

HAMBURG, Germany - A German court has ordered the release of a Moroccan convicted of belonging to a terrorist cell that included three Sept. 11 hijackers, a judicial official said Tuesday.

Mounir el Motassadeq was sentenced to seven years in prison last August by a court in Hamburg. City judicial spokesman Carsten Grote said Germany's Federal Constitutional Court has now ordered him released.

Grote did not give a reason for the higher court's decision.

[Gold9472]

Not one mention...

Judge Ernst-Rainer Schudt said that the US Justice Department had refused to co-operate fully with the German court (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1742264,00.html).

"How are we supposed to do justice to our task when important documents are withheld from us?"

[PhilosophyGenius]

There's no proof he ever did anything wrong.

[Gold9472]

There's no proof he ever did anything wrong.

I know. There's no "proof" any of the hijackers did anything wrong.

[PhilosophyGenius]

I know. There's no "proof" any of the hijackers did anything wrong.

word

[Gold9472]

If this guy was friendly with the alleged "hijackers", and the U.S. Government has proof that the alleged "hijackers" committed 9/11, then release the proof so people who helped plan 9/11 are held to account. If the U.S. Government refuses to do that, then you have to question whether or not what the Government is telling us is the truth. Of course as we all know, they're FULL OF SHIT.

[PhilosophyGenius]

Back when I believed the "official story", I thought this guy was innocent. All he did was help his buddies get visas or whatever. There was never any proof of him having links to al-Qaeda or having anything fishy in his backround that could be used against him in court.

[Gold9472]

World's first Sept 11 convict released in Germany

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060207/ts_afp/usattacksgermany

2 hours, 42 minutes ago

HAMBURG, Germany (AFP) - The first person to be convicted over the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, Moroccan national Mounir El Motassadeq, was released from a German prison pending a ruling on an appeal, authorities said.

The justice department in the northern city of Hamburg said that the decision to release Motassadeq had been made on the basis of a federal court ruling upholding a complaint by the 31-year-old Moroccan.

Motassadeq left the prison in the company of his lawyer on Tuesday evening, according to journalists at the scene.

He had been found guilty in August in a retrial of belonging to a terrorist organization for plotting holy war with fellow Muslim extremists, including three of the September 11 suicide hijackers in New York and Washington.

He was jailed for seven years but both the prosecution and the defense have appealed the sentence.

His lawyer Gerhard Strate told AFP he filed the suit demanding Motassadeq's release with the federal constitutional court in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe on the grounds that he had been held in custody during the year-long retrial.

He said that since he had not abused the trust the court placed in him at that time, it would be "capricious" to hold him in custody pending the decision on the appeal.

It was not immediately clear when the decision on whether to grant a retrial would be made.

Motassadeq was first found guilty in February 2003 and jailed for the maximum 15 years on more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization in the world's first conviction in connection with September 11.

But a retrial was ordered when a federal court in 2004 quashed the verdict on the grounds that US authorities had refused to allow the court to question top suspects from Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network in American custody.

During the new trial, the court found there was no evidence to show that Motassadeq had been directly involved in the attacks in New York and Washington, although he was found to be a member of the so-called Hamburg cell at the heart of the plot.

A Spanish court last September jailed Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, alias Abu Dahdah, the Syrian head of an Al-Qaeda cell based in that country, for 27 years for conspiring to commit murder in the attacks in New York and Washington.

Dahdah was jailed for 13 years for complicity in the attacks and 12 for belonging to a terrorist organisation.

"His participation was not proven regarding the execution of the attacks," the judges ruled, but the verdict indicated that he was linked to "Al-Qaeda's macabre designs."

Spain's High Court also jailed 17 other people, including a reporter for the Al-Jazeera television station, for between six and 11 years.

[Gold9472]

German court convicts 9/11 suspect of accessory to murder

http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=201466278&p=zxy466984

16/11/2006 - 10:41:25

A German federal appeals court today convicted a friend of three of the September 11 suicide pilots of accessory to murder for his alleged role in their plot and sent the case back to a lower court for sentencing.

In a short statement, Presiding Judge Klaus Tolksdorf said that a Hamburg court’s decision to acquit Mounir el Motassadeq on thousands of counts of accessory to murder had been “changed” and that the appeals court had found him guilty.

El Motassadeq, currently sentenced to seven years in prison for membership OF a terrorist organisation, now faces a total possible sentence of 15 years.

“We won, I’m ecstatic,” Dominic Puopolo, an American co-plaintiff whose mother died in one of the planes that struck the World Trade Center, told The Associated Press by phone from the United States.

In the Federal Court of Justice ruling in Karlsruhe, Tolksdorf said el Motassadeq, 32, had been found guilty of 246 counts of accessory to murder - representing the people who died in the planes in the September 11 attacks, but not the victims in the buildings they hit.

The ruling implied that the court found that there was at least enough evidence that el Motassadeq knew hijackers Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah planned to hijack planes, even if he did not have specific knowledge of their targets.

El Motassadeq has been free during his appeals process, and prosecutor Gerhard Altvater said his office would now consider asking for an order that he be taken back into custody as the lower court considers his sentencing.

Defence lawyer Ladislav Anisic said depending on the new sentence, he might appeal el Motassadeq’s case to Germany’s highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court.

El Motassadeq was convicted of membership in a terrorist organisation and thousands of counts of accessory to murder in 2003 – becoming the first person convicted anywhere on September 11-related charges. He was sentenced to the maximum 15 years in prison.