German court convicts 9/11 suspect of accessory to murder

http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/stor...78&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.