Lawyers for the Moroccan student convicted by a German court of aiding the September 11 attackers filed an appeal on Thursday, saying the judges’ reasoning was unsound and a potential key witness had not been heard. In the first trial of an alleged conspirator, Mounir El Motassadeq, 28, was convicted on Wednesday of being an accessory to the murder of 3,066 people in the hijacked airliner attacks on the United States and of belonging to a terrorist group. The court gave him the full 15 year jail sentence demanded by prosecutors, the maximum in Germany for accessory to murder. “The oral reasoning was not convincing,” Hans Leistritz, one of two defense lawyers representing the electrical engineering student, told Reuters, confirming the appeal had been filed. The prosecution’s case hinged on Motassadeq’s close friendship with key plotters based in Hamburg, his financial transfers for Marwan Al Shehi, the man said to have smashed the second plane into the World Trade Center, and his training at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. Full Story
About OODA Analyst
OODA is comprised of a unique team of international experts capable of providing advanced intelligence and analysis, strategy and planning support, risk and threat management, training, decision support, crisis response, and security services to global corporations and governments.