Moroccan on trial for 9/11 attacks

A Moroccan student went on trial in Germany yesterday, charged with 3,066 counts of being an accessory to murder: one for each of the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.

Abdelghani Mzoudi, 30, an electrical engineering student in Hamburg, is also charged with being a member of a terrorist organisation based in Hamburg which provided logistical support to the hijacker Mohammed Atta and other members of the cell.

He is accused of handling the money used to finance the attack and of receiving terrorist training at one of Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan.

If convicted, Mr Mzoudi faces the maximum 15-year jail term given to his fellow Moroccan Mounir El Motassadeq, who was convicted in February on the same charges.

The prosecutors are portraying Mr Mzoudi as a fanatical Muslim and anti-semite bent on destroying targets in America and Israel. He has chosen two Jewish lawyers, Guel Pinar and Michael Rosenthal, to defend him.

Mr Rosenthal said the attacks his client was charged with supporting were "a new Pearl Harbor" seized on by the Bush administration to pursue an aggressive foreign policy.

The prosecutors say Mr Mzoudi was involved in the preparation of the September 11 attacks up to the last minute.

They allege that he stayed in Germany to organise the logistics of the operation while the other terrorists flew to America to carry out the attack.

Matthias Krauss said: "His actions were designed to support the terror attacks. He was integrated into the plans from the beginning."

In an interview with Der Spiegel, Mr Mzoudi admitted that he was a friend of the Hamburg-based suicide pilots but said he was not privy to their plans.

"I was totally shocked when I heard that Atta may have had something to do with the attacks," he told Der Spiegel.

"I can't imagine a Muslim would do something like that - a Muslim would never do in children, elderly and women."

Mr Mzoudi faces a panel of five judges in the steel-doored Hamburg court where Motassadeq was convicted, but the case against him is thought to be less solid.

The charges against him were raised from aiding a terrorist organisation to accessory to murder after Motassadeq's conviction.

Unlike Motassadeq, Mr Mzoudi will not to testify. During three days on the stand, Motassadeq admitted training in Bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan and and said he had Mr Mzoudi there.

The defence wants evidence from Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni being held by the Americans in Guantanamo Bay, who is suspected of being the Hamburg cell's contact with al-Qaida.

The US authorities refused repeated requests for his appearance at the Motassadeq trial, although they passed on copies of the transcripts of his interrogation.

The trial is due to last until December but with 125 witnesses expected to appear, lawyers say it may last longer.