The US' refusal to allow testimony from a jailed al-Qaeda figure prompted a Hamburg judge on Thursday to order the release of a Moroccan accused of aiding the Sept. 11 hijackers.
The judge acted after reviewing new evidence that Ramzi Binalshibh, a suspected member of the Hamburg al-Qaeda cell that planned and executed the World Trade Center attacks, told US interrogators that only he and the three suicide pilots from the Hamburg cell knew about the attacks before they happened. The judge said that while he had strong doubts about the reliability of the evidence, he could not properly evaluate it without testimony from Binalshibh.
The trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in an American court in connection with the attacks, has also been thrown into doubt by the government's refusal to make captured al-Qaeda operatives available for questioning.
PHOTO: AP
The new evidence will force a quick decision about the fate of another Moroccan, Mounir el Motassadeq, who is the only person anywhere to have been convicted in connection with the attacks. That trial was also dogged by concerns that the US government had not been forthcoming with intelligence relevant to the case.
The man who was freed Thursday, Abdelghani Mzoudi, 31, is charged with acting as an accessory in the deaths of more than 3,000 people in the Sept. 11 attacks. While Ruehle granted the defense lawyers' request for an immediate release, the trial, now in its final stages, will continue.
The new evidence, submitted as a letter to the court from Germany's national police, the Federal Criminal Agency, included the testimony of an unnamed witness who said only four members of the Hamburg cell -- the three suspected to have been the suicide pilots, Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, and an associate, Binalshibh -- knew about the attacks beforehand. "These four people at no time spoke with others about the actual operations or creation of a terrorist cell for inciting a holy war," according to the witness' statement.
But the presiding judge, Klaus Ruehle, told the court that by process of elimination, the witness must have been Binalshibh, a close associate of the hijackers who was arrested in Pakistan exactly a year after the attacks and who remains in US custody.
"We have no doubt that Ramzi Binalshibh is the witness, and assume he was intensely interrogated about the attacks," Ruehle said in court.
The judge's decision also raised questions about the conviction of Motassadeq, who was sentenced this year to 15 years after being convicted on charges similar to those against Mzoudi. His lawyers immediately filed a request for his release and renewed their appeal of his conviction.
"This is a bombshell," said Hans Leistritz, who represented Motassadeq. "It collapses the prosecution's foundation of evidence."
It emerged during the trial of Motassadeq that the US authorities had given information from the interrogations of a number of suspects to German intelligence on strict conditions that forbade revealing details in court. Washington refused requests by the court that Binalshibh be made available for cross-examination.
During both trials, defense lawyers objected that the defendants could not receive fair trials without the testimony of Binalshibh, given his suspected central role in the planning of the attacks and his potential ability to exonerate Motassadeq and Mzoudi.
Ruehle made it clear that although he had doubts about the consistency and veracity of the witness' statements, his decision to release Mzoudi was affected by Washington's refusal to make Binalshibh available.
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