Key witnesses tortured in US: lawyers: 9/11 trial in Germany
HAMBURG, Aug 10: Defence lawyers for the only man convicted over the September 11, 2001 attacks called on Tuesday, the opening day of his retrial
, for the case to be quashed on the grounds key witnesses had likely been tortured.
Attorney Udo Jacob said that any statements made by two leading members of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network believed to be in US custody had likely been made under duress, tainting any evidence they might provide about the defendant, Moroccan student Mounir El Motassadeq.
"One must assume that (Ramzi) Binalshibh was and may currently be subjected to torture," Mr Jacob told the court in the northern German city of Hamburg, referring to a Yemeni national who has boasted that he masterminded the plot.
The court and the prosecution have also sought the testimony of top Al Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Another defence lawyer, Josef Graessle-Muenscher, quoted US media reports saying he had also been mistreated to extract intelligence.
Motassadeq, 30, is charged with complicity in the murder of some 3,000 people in the attacks in New York and Washington and membership in a terrorist organization.
He has acknowledged being a friend of the three Hamburg-based suicide hijackers but denies prior knowledge of their plot. Motassadeq was jailed for 15 years in February 2003 for his alleged role in the attacks, but in March this year a new trial was ordered because US authorities refused to allow Binalshibh to testify.
Presiding judge Ernst-Rainer Schudt said at the opening of the hearing that US authorities had again rejected German requests to let terror suspects they are holding in custody testify in Hamburg.
Binalshibh and Sheikh Mohammed are perhaps the only two people alive who could say what role, if any, Motassadeq played in the attacks. Mr Schudt read documents given to the court in which US officials said they would not allow "any enemy combatants to personally address the court, in line with national security interests".
They also refused to confirm which enemy combatants were in their custody and would not permit the Hamburg judges to question the suspects themselves. But they said they would supply "certain unclassified documents" that addressed questions posed by the court.
"Some progress has been made," Mr Schudt said. The prosecution also welcomed the American reply as a partial success. Mr Schudt said he would now take under advisement four large ring binders compiled by the defence on US interrogation methods for terror suspects in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Guantanamo Bay lockup in Cuba.
But an American whose mother was killed in the first plane that hit New York's World Trade Center, Dominic Puopolo, reacted angrily to the defence allegations.
"One of the issues I found very offensive was making sweeping indictments about the US government and intelligence agencies," said Puopolo, who is a co-plaintiff in the case. "You are desecrating the memories of the 3,000 people that died including my mother."
As the new trial got under way, Schudt insisted that the court would be independent of any outside pressures regarding the high-profile case. "You can see that Hamburg is again under the shadow of September 11 but we will conduct the trial according to German criminal law," said Schudt, who is heading a five-member panel of judges.
"We will neither follow the wishes of the government nor the expectations of the public. Our aim is a fair result." The German government has been actively campaigning for a legal crackdown on suspected extremists and recently passed a series of measures through parliament allowing it to expel them more quickly. Washington has described Motassadeq as "dangerous". -AFP
