GERMANY: A Moroccan man with links to the Hamburg cell behind the September 11th attacks is facing 15 years in prison after Germany's highest appeal court found him guilty of acting as an accessory to murder.
After a five-year legal marathon, the federal appeal court overturned a seven-year sentence imposed by a Hamburg court last year on Mounir al- Motassadeq for membership of a terrorist organisation.
The appeal judges said the lower court was wrong to dismiss the charge that al-Motassadeq was an accessory to the attacks simply because he did not know the precise details of the attacks on Washington and New York.
The appeals court ruled that al-Motassadeq was a friend of the ringleaders and was aware of their plot in which aircraft passengers would die.
"You, Mr Motassadeq, were a comrade in spirit," one judge remarked in court yesterday.
He supported the plot from Germany, paying the rents and flying school tuition and concealing the intentions of the men who later hijacked four aircraft on September 11th, 2001.
The court ruled that he was complicit in the murder of the 246 passengers and crew on four aircraft who died on that day.
Al-Motassadeq, who was arrested in November 2001 and has spent more than 100 days in various courts since then, was not present when the verdict was read out.
His lawyer, Ladislav Anisic, said: "We now expect that it will come to a higher sentence."
The final sentencing will bring to an end a case which German prosecutors and politicians said was deliberately hampered by US investigators.
Al-Motassadeq first went on trial in 2003.