Retrial likely for 9/11 hijacker friend-German judge

KARLSRUHE, Germany, Oct 12 (Reuters) A Moroccan friend of the September 11 hijackers may face a third trial for his possible involvement in the plot against U.S. targets, a judge in Germany's highest court of appeals said today.

Mounir El Motassadeq was last year convicted of belonging to a terrorist organisation but was unexpectedly freed from a Hamburg prison in February after Germany's Constitutional Court upheld a defence motion that he be released pending an appeal.

Prosecutors in the case argue that Motassadeq knew about and helped the Sept. 11 hijackers but his lawyers say there are no legal grounds for branding him as a member of a terrorist organisation.

''A preliminary assessment seems to point to the prosecutor's appeal being successful,'' said Judge Klaus Tolksdorf during a hearing at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe, western Germany, on the first day of the hearing.

''It was clear that Motassadeq knew his acquaintances from Hamburg were planning attacks with planes,'' said Tolksdorf.

He added that because Motassadeq accepted people would die, it looked as if he had knowingly aided murderers.

''Our opinion is that the defendant should have also been convicted of accessory to murder,'' Gerhard Altvater, a federal prosecutor, told reporters.

DECISION IN NOVEMBER The court will announce its decision on November 16.

Motassadeq, who had been serving a 7-year sentence, is one of only a handful of men to have been tried in connection with the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in 2001.

It took prosecutors two long trials to get a conviction, albeit on the lesser of two charges.

While finding him guilty of belonging to a terrorist group, the judges found Motassadeq -- a friend of three of the hijackers who were based in Hamburg -- knew too little of their plans to convict him on a second charge of abetting mass murder.

They found Motassadeq was only a lower-tier member of the group of radical Arab students led by Mohamed Atta, who flew the first hijacked plane into New York's World Trade Center.

Motassadeq's lawyers do not question that their client supported members of the Hamburg-based al Qaeda cell that planned and carried out the hijackings but they dispute he knew the extent of their plans and was a member of a terrorist group.

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