HAMBURG, Germany — A German court on Wednesday convicted a Moroccan student of being an accessory to the murder of thousands in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, concluding that Mounir el Motassadeq was an al-Qaida operative who helped the Hamburg cell headed by Mohamed Atta carry out the suicide hijackings.
In a heavily guarded courthouse, Motassadeq, 28, the first person to go on trial in connection with the attacks, received the maximum sentence that German law allows, 15 years in prison, for his role in the deaths of nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
Throughout the trial, which began in October, the former electrical engineering student proclaimed his innocence, acknowledging that he had attended a training camp in Afghanistan that Osama bin Laden operated and had sent money to his fellow Muslim students. But he said he had no idea they were planning any violence.
Prosecutors countered that he had played an “ice-cold” role in helping a plot to turn airliners into weapons that resulted in “the most terrible terrorist attack in history.” Presiding Judge Albrecht Mentz found the prosecutors had made their circumstantial case.
“The accused belonged to this group since its inception,” Mentz said in reading the verdict. “He knew and approved the key elements of the planned attacks … including the high number of victims.”
The judge cited the testimony of Motassadeq’s former roommate, who quoted him as saying, “They have something big planned… The Jews will burn, and we will dance on their graves.”
When the judge gave the sentence, Motassadeq, standing with his arms crossed, squeezed his eyes shut. He was stunned by the verdict, one of his lawyers said afterward. The lawyer said they would appeal the verdict, which also found that Motassadeq belonged to a terrorist group.
A tall, gaunt man with a thin beard, Motassadeq (mo-ta-SAH-dek) moved to Germany in 1993. After studying German, he enrolled in an electrical engineering program at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg. Two years later, according to Germany’s chief prosecutor, Motassadeq met Atta, the intense, Egyptian-born leader of the group of seven Islamic students who formed the nucleus of the Hamburg al-Qaida cell.