Convicted terrorist: German sentencing proceeds

Jan 8, 2007, 17:29 GMT

Hamburg - A series of defence motions failed Monday to halt a sentencing hearing in Germany on Moroccan student Mounir al-Motassadeq, 32, who has already been convicted for his role in the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

Rejecting the challenges one by one, judges pushed ahead with the hearing into the evening after declaring their intention of finishing the case Monday. The sentencing court, comprising three Hamburg state superior court judges, had convened on Friday.

Federal prosecutor Walter Hemberger summed up the state case, calling for the maximum 15-year sentence.

A complaint of court bias was referred to another panel of judges at the courthouse as the Motassadeq judges forged ahead. Udo Jacob, one of two legal-aid lawyers in court for Motassadeq, said the bid to despatch the case 'at top speed' amounted to prejudice.

The court is considering whether to increase the Moroccan's 7-year sentence. He was convicted in 2005 of being a member of a terrorist group and last year an appeal court convicted him of being an accessory to the murder of 246 occupants of the four hijacked planes.

The sentencing hearing was ordered to revise the jail term in the light of this additional conviction.

Motassadeq was a close friend of three of the hijack pilots and a member of their prayer group before they moved to the United States to train as pilots. Although he denies it, judge at two trials were convinced he knew in advance of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

During a break in proceedings, Jacob sent an urgent application to Germany's Constitutional Court demanding that it stop the trial.

Presiding judge Carsten Beckmann had said Friday he wanted to finish the trial by Monday, handing down a 'considerable' jail term.

Ladislav Anisic, the lead defence attorney, said that even if sentence were passed Monday, he would continue appeals for his client.

'This is only an intermediate stage on the way up to the next court,' he said outside the courtroom.

His colleague Jacob said he wished to call Mohammad Haidar Sammar as a witness. Sammar, a Syrian who is reported to be in a Damascus jail, was allegedly the representative of al-Qaeda in Hamburg in the late 1990s.

Jacob is trying to persuade the constitutional court, which does not hear criminal appeals, that the case is a miscarriage of justice.

The sentencing hearing was the fifth time in court for Motassadeq after two trials and two appeals relating to the Islamist attacks on New York and Washington which claimed around 3,000 lives.