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A Moroccan man convicted of aiding Mohamed Atta and other suicide bombers based in Hamburg on September 11th while planning their attacks on New York and Washington was expelled Monday from Germany to his native country.
Mounir el Motassadeq, convicted of membership in a terrorist organization and accomplice in the murder of the 246 passengers and crew members of the four airliners used in the 2001 attacks, was transported by helicopter to a prison from Hamburg on Monday morning.
Blindfolded and his hands and ankles tightened, the 44-year-old policeman was then taken by two police officers to another helicopter, while other heavily armed, hooded policemen patrolled the area and watched. from the roofs.
Authorities would not comment on the operation for security reasons.
"Mr Motassadeq will soon be leaving the country," Associated Press spokesman Frank Reschreiter, spokesman for the Hamburg Interior Ministry, told reporters. "All the procedural steps necessary for this purpose have been checked in accordance with the plan."
El Motassadeq was released shortly before serving his fifteen-year prison sentence on condition that he agrees to be deported to Morocco. This would allow Germany to re-arrest him if he ever returned to the country.
What was waiting for him in Morocco was not immediately clear.
El Motassadeq was found guilty of being part of the so-called Hamburg cell, including Atta and his other pilots, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, of 11 September.
German courts found that El Motassadeq was aware of the hijacking and crash plan, even though he may not know the details of the plot. They added that el Motassadeq had helped "monitor the back of the attackers and conceal them" by helping them retain the appearance of university students paying tuition, renting and transferring money. 39; money.
El Motassadeq admitted to having trained at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, but insisted that he was unaware of any plans for his friends to attack the United States.
"I swear by God that I knew the attackers were in America," he said in German accentuated during a hearing. "I swear by God that I did not know what they wanted to do."
Originally arrested in Hamburg in November 2001, Motassadeq was convicted in 2003 for membership in a terrorist organization and for thousands of murder charges – taking into account the victims on the ground – thus becoming the first person sentenced for 9/11 charges. He was sentenced to a maximum of 15 years in prison.
However, a federal court overturned this verdict in 2004, mainly because of the lack of evidence from Al-Qaida suspects incarcerated in the United States, and sent the case back to Hamburg.
After a retrial in 2005, El Motassadeq was again found guilty of membership in a terrorist organization including Atta, al-Shehhi and Jarrah. But he was acquitted of complicity in murder after the court had found that he did not have enough evidence showing that he was aware of the plot of the pirates in the air.
El Motassadeq had been sentenced to seven years in prison at the time, but had been released in early 2006 until his appeal could be heard.
Later that year, the Federal Court quashed the acquittal of the Hamburg court on Motassadeq for complicity in murder, finding that the evidence knew that the conspirators planned to hijack and crush planes. It has, however, limited the number of charges to 246 people killed on board aircraft and the 15-year sentence has been reinstated.
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Frank Jordans contributed to this story.
