By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
BERLIN, May 24 -- Attorneys for a terrorism suspect in Germany voiced skepticism last year when U.S. officials agreed to submit as evidence intelligence reports gleaned from the interrogations of captured al Qaeda leaders. Citing prisoner abuse in U.S. jails in Iraq and elsewhere, the lawyers argued that the reports would be unreliable as evidence in the trial of their client, accused of being a member of the Hamburg cell that led the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
As the trial nears an end, however, attorneys for defendant Mounir Motassadeq have changed their views. They find evidence for acquittal in the reports, notably an account from one of the interrogated men that only he and three of the 19 hijackers who died on Sept. 11 were core members of the Hamburg cell.
"I'm quite content," Udo Jacob, lead attorney for Motassadeq, said in a telephone interview from Hamburg. "I think we can take it as it is. When you take all the reports together, they effectively prove that Mr. Motassadeq was not involved in the plans."
Jacob said it "speaks well of the United States" that the government would turn over the reports, even though they might benefit the defense.
On Tuesday, the German court overseeing the retrial of Motassadeq on 3,066 counts of accessory to murder and other charges made public the second -- and final -- batch of U.S. intelligence reports pertaining to the Hamburg cell.
The documents include summaries of statements made to interrogators by Ramzi Binalshibh, an al Qaeda figure arrested in Pakistan in 2002 who investigators believe was a central player in the Hamburg cell. The documents barely mention Motassadeq.
Motassadeq was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to 15 years in prison for aiding the hijackers, as well as for membership in a terrorist organization. But the verdict was overturned after an appellate court ruled that the evidence was weak.
Since then, German prosecutors have pressed U.S. officials for more intelligence drawn from captured al Qaeda leaders. While the Justice Department responded with two filings, last August and again this month, the statements from Binalshibh did not contain the kind of evidence prosecutors had hoped for.
"I know there is disappointment at the federal prosecutor's office," said Bernd-Ruediger Sonnen, a law professor at Hamburg University. "This is material that strengthens the defense and weakens the federal prosecution. And when in doubt, the court must decide for the defendant."
In a Hamburg court on Tuesday, it was prosecutors who were arguing that the intelligence reports were unreliable, noting that Binalshibh gave many conflicting statements about the conspiracy to his interrogators. "The question is whether you believe Binalshibh," said prosecutor Matthias Krauss, according to the Reuters news agency.
Dominic J. Puopolo Jr., a Miami Beach computer consultant whose mother was a passenger on one of the hijacked planes on Sept. 11, said in a telephone interview that he was convinced that Binalshibh and other captured al Qaeda leaders were concealing the truth to protect Motassadeq and others.
"It's terrorists covering for other terrorists," said Puopolo, who has followed Motassadeq's retrial closely. "It's the whole modus operandi for how al Qaeda works, which is to deceive. Ever since they've been caught, they've continued to mislead and misinform."
Special correspondent Shannon Smiley contributed to this report.