"There's really no proof that he was involved," said Udo Jacob, one of his defense attorneys. "There's no proof that they discussed their plans with Motassadeq. It's only imagination."
Legal experts said it could take several months or years to expel any accused Hamburg cell members from Germany.
A cameraman films a Hamburg courtroom, protected by bulletproof glass and netting, before a session in the first trial of Mounir Motassadeq in 2002.
(Pool Photo/Heribert Proepper Via AP)
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Darkazanli, the accused al Qaeda financier who holds German citizenship, is fighting his extradition to Spain. The German constitution generally prohibits the extradition of its citizens, but Darkazanli was arrested on the basis of a new warrant adopted last year by member countries of the European Union.
The Hamburg businessman was scheduled to be extradited two weeks ago, but a German appellate court agreed to hear his case. Legal analysts predict it will rule whether the new European arrest warrant -- which officials call a major new weapon in fighting terrorism across the continent -- is constitutional.
"This is a very hot issue," said Christoph Safferling, a criminal law professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. "It is sort of the ultimate challenge to the European arrest warrant. This will be the test case."
Motassadeq and Mzoudi both came to Hamburg from Morocco in the 1990s on student visas. Their attorneys said that if they are found not guilty of the criminal charges, they would argue that there is no reason to deport them and they should be allowed to resume their studies.
"How can they prove he is a danger to someone if he has not been convicted of a crime?" said Hartmut Jacobi, a lawyer representing Mzoudi in his deportation case. "It's a good situation for us to be in."
Under a new German law, however, the government can deport immigrants even if they are only suspected of committing a crime, or if their expulsion would serve a broader "public interest."
The Moroccan government has no charges pending against either Motassadeq or Mzoudi. But their attorneys noted that the Moroccan government has a close working relationship with U.S. counterterrorism officials and has cooperated on other investigations involving al Qaeda.
In 2002, for example, Moroccan officials arrested Mohammed Haydar Zammar, an alleged recruiter for al Qaeda in Hamburg, as he was visiting the country on a trip from Germany. Moroccan investigators interrogated Zammar in a joint operation with U.S. officials, then put him on a plane two weeks later to Syria, where he was imprisoned and has not been heard from since.
Special correspondent Shannon Smiley contributed to this report.
