A key Al-Qaeda suspect in US custody has claimed that the only man convicted over the September 11 attacks was unaware of the plot, US authorities told a German court Wednesday.
Ernst-Rainer Schudt, the judge presiding at the retrial of Mounir El Motassadeq, appeared taken aback by the surprise announcement which, taken at face value, could see the Moroccan acquitted.
"We have to consider what the consequences are," Schudt said.
In documents faxed to the court in Hamburg, northern Germany, by the US Justice Department, Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni who has boasted he masterminded the suicide hijackings, reportedly told US authorities that Motassadeq was unaware of the plot.
"Motassadeq did not know about the activities of the Hamburg group," Binalshibh was quoted in the documents as saying, referring to himself and the three hijackers who had been based in Hamburg.
According to the statement, Motassadeq was not informed about the conspiracy "for security reasons".
Motassadeq, 30, is charged with aiding and abetting the murder of some 3,000 people in the attacks in New York and Washington and membership in a terrorist organization.
He was jailed for 15 years in February 2003 for his alleged role in the attacks, but in March this year a new trial was ordered because US authorities refused to allow Binalshibh to testify.
The retrial began Tuesday.
A separate fax reached Schudt hours before the trial began Tuesday in which US authorities said they would not allow "any enemy combatants" to personally address the court, due to national security concerns.
The statement came in response to a request by the court for Washington to allow Binalshibh and another top operative of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to testify.
US authorities also refused to confirm in the fax which enemy combatants were in their custody and said they would not permit the Hamburg judges to question the suspects themselves.
Motassadeq's defense team had demanded Tuesday that the trial be suspended and any information provided about the interrogation of Binalshibh and Sheikh Mohammed be thrown out on the grounds that they had likely been tortured.
A fellow Moroccan student, Abdelghani Mzoudi, was acquitted in February of the same charges Motassadeq is now facing, on the basis of a fax sent to the court by German federal police.
That fax, believed to be a summary of US interrogations of Binalshibh provided by Washington, also stated that Binalshibh and the three suicide pilots were the only members of the Hamburg group in on the plot.
Federal prosecutors, who would face a humiliating blow with a second acquittal over the September 11 attacks, have argued that Motassadeq was a full-fledged member of the so-called Hamburg cell.
During his first trial, Motassadeq, a married father of two, admitted to attending an Al-Qaeda paramilitary training camp in Afghanistan, signing the will of the future ringleader of the hijackers, Mohammed Atta, and transferring funds for the plotters.
But he consistently denied prior knowledge of the plot.
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