HAMBURG, Jan 22: A surprise witness who caused the postponement of a verdict due on Thursday in a trial over the Sept 11, 2001, attacks in the United States has told German authorities that Iranian intelligence was involved in the plot.

Two German federal police officers told the court in Hamburg, northern Germany on Thursday that the witness was an Iranian man claiming to be a former spy for Tehran until mid-2001.

The witness has been called by federal prosecutors who say that he can incriminate Moroccan student Abdelghani Mzoudi, the second man worldwide to stand trial over the suicide hijackings that killed more than 3,000 people.

Mzoudi is accused of being a key member of the so-called Hamburg cell that produced three of the hijackers including alleged ringleader Mohammed Atta. On Wednesday, the court made a shock announcement that it had agreed to wait to deliver its verdict to assess the credibility of the new witness.

According to German media, the suspect told German police that Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and three other ayatollahs met with Osama bin Laden's oldest son at an airbase near Tehran May 4, 2001, to finalize the plans for the attacks.

The officers testified that the witness had told them that Mzoudi had been to Iran and was "active in the logistics of the Sept 11, 2001, operation," including the "composition and transmission of (encrypted) information to intermediaries".

The purported spy also said that Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network had planned to have Mzoudi "eliminated" because he was suspected of cooperating with German authorities during questioning, the officers said.-AFP