2ND Germany arrests convicted terrorist Motassadeq

dpa German Press Agency
Published: Sunday November 26, 2006

Hamburg- German police detained convicted terrorist Mounir al-Motassadeq, 32, in Hamburg Friday when judges cancelled his bail, one day after he was found guilty of assisting the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Motassadeq, a Moroccan student, had been free on bail, but under police monitoring, since February as the German courts reviewed his case. He had been given seven years in jail last year for being a member of the Hamburg terrorist cell that provided three 9/11 pilots.

On Thursday, German High Court judges added a second conviction: for being an accessory to the murder of 246 occupants of the hijacked planes that crashed in New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania.

Rivalries between German federal and state courts were evident Friday as state judges in the northern city of Hamburg stubbornly refused to order the Moroccan Islamist into jail. Instead the order came from the federal justice capital of Karlsruhe.

"He was picked up at his Hamburg apartment without any difficulty," said a police source in Hamburg. Motassadeq has been in and out of Hamburg jails since he was first detained the month after the 2001 attacks, when he claimed he had no foreknowledge of the strikes.

Judges in Karlsruhe said the fact that Motassadeq's wife and offspring had left Germany for Morocco created an increased risk that he would try to flee Germany before a sentencing hearing that was likely to be "to his disadvantage."

Two panels of Hamburg judges had earlier said Motassadeq could be trusted because he had always observed bail conditions in the past. His lawyer, Ladislav Anicic, told the website Spiegel Online that his client had no intention of running away.

As a close friend of Mohammed Atta and other pilots and a graduate of an al-Qaeda Afghan training camp, he was convicted last year of membership in a terrorist cell. On Thursday he was found guilty of an actual role in 9/11 because he also covered the plotters' tracks.

© 2006 dpa German Press Agency