08 April 2004	Thursday	17 Safar 1425

HAMBURG, April 7: The only man convicted over the Sept 11 attacks was released from custody in Germany on Wednesday, raising the prospect that he will be acquitted in a forthcoming retrial.

The United States made no secret of its irritation, calling 30-year-old Moroccan Mounir El Motassadeq "a dangerous guy". But the same court that sentenced him to 15 years jail last year for conspiring to murder around 3,000 people in the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, ruled he should be freed.

He emerged beaming from Hamburg's main courthouse, but made no comment before four friends steered him into a waiting car. "What's important is that he is free and can be with his family," defence lawyer Josef Graessle-Muenscher said of his client, who is married with two children. "I think that we're heading towards an acquittal or the abandonment of the trial."

US State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said America was disappointed by the release. "We believe the evidence against him is strong and we believe he is a dangerous guy," he said.

Motassadeq had also been found guilty of belonging to a terrorist organisation - a German al Qaeda cell that included three of the 2001 suicide hijackers. Prosecutors had described him as a "vital cog" in the September 11 plot.

But Germany's Supreme Court quashed his conviction and ordered a retrial a month ago, shortly after new evidence led to the acquittal of Motassadeq's friend, Abdelghani Mzoudi, who had faced almost identical charges. The Hamburg court said on Wednesday that Motassadeq was no longer "strongly suspected" of aiding murder, but may still have belonged to a terrorist organisation. - Reuters