posted on Aug, 19 2005 @ 06:47 AM
Mounir el-Motassadeq was sentenced Friday in a German court to 7 years after being found guilty of belonging to a terrorist group. He was acquitted
on charges of "accessory to murder" for the 9/11 attacks.
w
ww.reuters.com
Moroccan Mounir El Motassadeq was found guilty of belonging to a terrorist group on Friday and sentenced to seven years in jail by a German court but
he was cleared of a charge he aided the September 11 attackers.
Judge Ernst-Rainer Schudt said the court believed that Motassadeq was an acquaintance of Mohamed Atta, the Hamburg student who crashed a hijacked
plane into New York's World Trade Center. But Motassadeq, 31, was found to be lacking by al-Qaeda leaders who assessed him at an Afghan training
camp.
The verdict came after a year-long retrial at which prosecutors had tried to prove Motassadeq helped plot the suicide hijack attacks that killed
nearly 3,000 people in 2001. He had been convicted on both charges at a first trial in 2003, but that ruling was quashed on appeal.
Please visit the link provided for the complete story.
It's interesting that though he freely admitted vitriolic anti-US sentiment and making statements at Atta's home attesting to this, actually signed
Atta's will and acted as power of attorney to one of the alleged hijackers, there wasn't enough evidence to prove that he actually knew about 9/11
prior to the event.
Personally, I think it's unlikely that he didn't know about the 9/11 plot in advance; if nothing else he knew enough about the Hamburg cell that it
would just seem unlikely for him to remain in the dark. The courts apparently disagree.
With that in mind - I don't think the sentence was long enough.
Related News Links:
news.bbc.co.uk
cnn.com
[edit on 19-8-2005 by Tinkleflower]
[edit on 19-8-2005 by Tinkleflower]
[edit on 14-2-2006 by DJDOHBOY]