Guilty of plotting September 11: the fanatic driven by hatred of America

A Moroccan student driven by "hatred of America and Israel" was found guilty of aiding the 11 September 2001 suicide hijackers and jailed for a maximum of 15 years by a Hamburg court yesterday in the first conviction of a conspirator involved in the world's worst terrorist attack.

Mounir al-Motassadeq, 28, a member of the Hamburg cell that planned and executed the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, was convicted of being an accessory to murder in 3,066 cases and of membership of a terrorist organisation.

Sentencing Motassadeq to the maximum 15-year term demanded by the prosecution, the presiding judge, Albrecht Mentz, said the electrical engineering student had belonged to the group headed by the chief hijacker, Mohamed Atta, from its inception.

"This group of Arab and Muslim students planned the attack out of hatred for America and Israel," Mr Mentz said. "They wanted to strike at the foundations of the United States with an attack of hitherto unprecedented dimensions."

Motassadeq, the judge said, had provided logistical support for the group and funded the hijackers from his bank account. He had covered up for the suicide pilots after they had left Hamburg for America to launch the 11 September attacks. "He fulfilled this task. He knew about the preparations for the attack and supported the planning," Mr Mentz said.

He was arrested in November 2001 while preparing to return to Morocco, where his wife had just given birth to their second child.

Dressed in an open-necked shirt and pullover, he remained stony-faced and motionless as the verdict against him was read out. During the four-month trial he had claimed repeatedly to have known nothing of the plans to attack New York and Washington. He said he had simply befriended fellow Muslim students at Hamburg's Technical University, where he and the hijackers were studying, and claimed to have always rejected violence and extremism.

Defence lawyers, who had called for Motassadeq's acquittal, said yesterday they would appeal against the verdict, insisting that the evidence did not stand up. His lawyer Hans Leistritz said: "What we have here is suspicions, interpretations of behaviour and interpretations of beliefs."

Hartmut Jacobi, another defence lawyer, complained that the American and German security services had refused to release evidence provided by the suspected al-Qa'ida member Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who is being held in America.

Federal prosecutors used evidence from several witnesses and intelligence material to mount their case. They were convinced that Motassadeq worked as the "accountant" for the Hamburg cell formed by Atta and the two other suicide pilots, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah. Motassadeq was said to have helped to pay for flying lessons taken by the pilots and to have signed Atta's will.

The prosecution's case relied mainly on Motassadeq's admission that he had attended an al-Qa'ida military training camp in Afghanistan for three weeks in 2000. He said he was taught to use a Kalashnikov assault rifle and listened to speeches given by Osama bin Laden. Motassadeq insisted that he went there purely for religious reasons, claiming that Islam required him to be trained how to use a weapon.

Motassadeq went to Germany in 1993, initially to learn German. Two years later he enrolled in an electrical engineering course at the Technical University, where he met Atta, Shehhi and Jarrah. The four-month trial provided insights into their spartan student life in their shared flat.

The four prayed together at the local mosque and outwardly lived as ordinary students, cooking meals together and holding the odd party in the Marienstrasse flat. But vital evidence from a Hamburg librarian suggested that the students' activities were far more sinister than Motassadeq claimed. She testified that more than a year before the 11 September attacks, Shehhi had boasted about the atrocities, saying: "There will be thousands of dead. You will all think of me." The librarian said she did not take the threat seriously.

Documents revealed that Motassadeq's account at a branch of Dresdner Bank was used to meet the cell's expenses but the court ruled yesterday that it was financed mainly by "unknown persons" in the United Arab Emirates.

Throughout the trial Motassadeq insisted that he did not believe Atta was capable of launching the 11 September attacks or of being the cell's ringleader. "I never saw him ordering anyone to do anything," he said of Atta. In his closing statement last week he said: "I couldn't believe that people I knew could do something like that. I can only hope that something like 11 September never happens again."