Second Hamburg Terror Trial Begins

Half a year after a Hamburg judge sentenced Moroccan Mounir el-Motassadeq to the maximum 15 years for aiding and abetting the September 11 terrorist attacks, the trial of one of his friends begins grappling with the same questions the previous trial left open.

Like Motassadeq, Abdelghani Mzoudi loitered on the edges of the tight-knit cell of terrorists suspected of planning and carrying the terrorist attacks in Washington and New York City. Like his countryman, Mzoudi, 30, faces charges of accessory to the murder of more than 3,000 people in the attacks and membership in a terror organization.

As the trial gets underway, the judges will attempt to answer the same question that burdened the Motassadeq trial: when do the favors done by friends of the cell become complicity in the attacks?

Similar trials, different strategies

German police hovered around Mzoudi for more than a year after the terrorist attacks before finally bringing him in for question. Following the successful prosecution of Motassadeq (photo), federal prosecutors formally arrested Mzoudi and charged him with the same crimes for which Motassadeq is currently serving 15 years.

Prosecutors say Mzoudi's role was similar to Motassadeq's. He paid the bills for Zakariya Essabar, who investigators believed was supposed to be one of the hijackers before he was denied a Visa, and let Atta and terror pilot Marwan Al-Shehi give his address as their own while they were away in Afghanistan.

Reports say that prosecutors also intend to prove that Mzoudi was in Afghanistan and met up with one of the members of the Hamburg cell in Casablanca.

Defense lawyers will take much the same tack used by Motassadeq's team, namely, that the favors done by Mzoudi are typical among Muslims. But if Mzoudi is to avoid a simliar fate, the lawyers will undoubtedly need more.

The missing link

Missing in the Motassadeq case was the testimony of Ramzi Binalshibh (photo of his capture), one of the plots' masterminds who since September 11, 2002 is being held at an undisclosed location by the U.S. government.

U.S. and German authorities refused to let Binalshibh testify in the Motassadeq case, and the court rejected appeals by the defense to force an answer from the German Intelligence Agency. Defense lawyers believed Binalshibh would be able to show how insignificant a role Motassadeq had in the plans.

In order to put the authorities under more pressure, Mzoudi's lawyers have said they will discourage their client from saying anything at the trial. The hope is that Mzoudi will avoid mistakes such as the one Motassadeq made on the first day of his trial when he admitted to attending a Taliban training camp in Afghanistan.

They also plan to file numerous requests with the court to get Binalshibh and other witnesses to testify. Not letting in the testimony, say observers, would serious damage the credibility of the trial verdict.