LONDON, Jan 12: A man accused of being connected with events leading up to the September 11 attacks in New York could be freed on bail if the US government does not come up with formal charges to link him to the events.

A magistrate at Belmarsh court in south-east London yesterday challenged the US government to produce evidence that Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian pilot who has been in custody in the high security Belmarsh prison for almost four months, was connected to terrorism.

The 27-year-old, who sobbed throughout a 20-minute court hearing on Friday, is alleged to have helped train the hijackers who flew airliners into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

However, the only charges the US has levelled at Mr Raissi are that he made false statements when applying for a pilot’s licence in Arizona; he failed to declare an old tennis injury on a medical form; and covered up an old conviction for theft. The US has insisted that these are holding charges and that more serious ones will follow. It is seeking to extradite the pilot.

The magistrate, Timothy Workman, who had previously said that the links between Mr Raissi and the terror attacks were “tenuous”, said that if, by February 12, the US was “unable to give the assurances that further charges of terrorist offences are to be offered, I have to assume that they won’t. I will then deal with the bail application on the charges before me”.

The magistrate acknowledged that if Mr Raissi were to be found guilty of the charges his sentence would most likely be less than the time he has spent on remand.

The FBI has claimed that Mr Raissi was a member of group and that he made frequent trips to the US between June 10 and July 11 in order to make sure that the hijackers were “capable and trained” to carry out the attacks. It was claimed that he was responsible for training Hanni Hanjour, suspected of being the pilot of the airliner that hit the Pentagon. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.