German court hands Moroccan max for 9/11
By SIMONE UTLER
HAMBURG, Germany - A Moroccan man convicted of aiding three of the four suicide pilots who committed the Sept. 11 attacks was sentenced Monday to the maximum of 15 years in prison for his role in the terror plot.
"Anyone who helped in this has earned stiff punishment," presiding Judge Carsten Beckmann said after announcing Monday‘s verdict. Defense lawyers said they would appeal.
Dominic Puopolo Jr. fought back tears and held up pictures of his mother, Sonia Morales Puopolo, an American Airlines flight attendant, as he joined prosecutors in calling for the maximum penalty. He urged the judges to consider the "human and emotional cost" of the 2001 attacks. The American man is a co-plaintiff in the case under the German court system.
Puopolo said he forgave el Motassadeq, and reminded him that he will one day be freed.
The federal appeals court had ruled that the Hamburg judges wrongly acquitted el Motassadeq in 2005 of direct involvement in the attacks, even though the Hamburg court sentenced him to seven years in prison for belonging to a terrorist group.
El Motassadeq‘s attorneys said they intended to challenge the sentence before a federal appeals court. They have already appealed the conviction to the Federal Constitutional Court, arguing that the court failed properly to hear evidence from other terror suspects. It is unclear when that court, Germany‘s highest, will consider the complaint.
"We have a clear mandate, and that is to ensure that our client receives the acquittal," he said.
El Motassadeq was a close friend of pilots Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah when they lived and studied in Hamburg. He has acknowledged training at an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan and that he was close to the three hijackers although he insists he knew nothing of their plans.
The federal court also said it was irrelevant to el Motassadeq‘s guilt whether he knew of the plot‘s timing, dimension or targets.
He was convicted and sentenced to the maximum 15 years in prison in 2003, but that verdict was overturned by a federal court the following year — largely because of a lack of evidence from al-Qaida suspects in U.S. custody.
At a retrial that resulted in the 2005 conviction, the U.S. provided limited summaries from the interrogation of, among others, Ramzi Binalshibh, a suspected liaison between the Hamburg hijackers and al-Qaida.
El Motassadeq has already spent about three years in custody, time that would count against a final sentence.
Asked by reporters outside the court if he felt German laws were too lenient, Puopolo said it was "a little bit frustrating" but praised the work of the prosecutors.
"It‘s not going to bring my mom back, but it‘s a part of a process of closure. I‘m glad that I came to Hamburg."
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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