A German court convicted a Moroccan man Wednesday of aiding the September 11 suicide hijackers and sentenced him to 15 years in jail in the first trial anywhere of a suspected attack conspirator. Mounir El Motassadeq, a 28-year-old electrical engineering student, was convicted of being an accessory to the murder of 3,066 people in New York and Washington and with belonging to a terrorist organization, presiding judge Albrecht Mentz said. Motassadeq was impassive as Mentz read out the sentence, the maximum possible jail term that prosecutors had demanded. Motassadeq had denied the charges but admitted knowing Mohamed Atta, who had also spent time studying in Hamburg and who U.S. authorities say crashed the first plane into the World Trade Center. He had also admitted spending time in a training camp in Afghanistan run by the al Qaeda organization. Prosecutors had said the accused was aware of the hijackers’ plans and provided logistical back-up for the Hamburg-based al Qaeda cell led by Atta. Full Story
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