Plotters: 9/11 convict not cell member

HAMBURG, Germany - A Moroccan man facing a retrial here on charges of aiding the Sept. 11 hijackers knew nothing of the plot, according to interrogations by U.S. officials of two key suspected al-Qaida operatives.

Summaries of the interrogations were disclosed in court Wednesday after Germany's two-year attempt to persuade Washington to share intelligence. The new information heightened the drama around the fate of Mounir el Motassadeq, a 30-year-old electrical engineering student and the only man convicted in the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

The summaries - the United States refused to provide detailed transcripts, or to allow the suspects to appear in court - offer a narrow glimpse into events leading to Sept. 11.

Statements by Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the plot, suggest that Motassadeq was not informed of the plan and was not in the tight circle of extremists that became known as the Hamburg cell.

Those characterizations appeared to be a setback for prosecutors. But a fax sent to the court by the U.S. Justice Department noted there were concerns about the reliability of Binalshibh and Mohammed.

"Because of inconsistencies by at least one of the individuals there may be reason to question the assertions regarding Mounir Motassadeq," the fax said, adding that the suspects may be "employing counterinterrogation techniques."

Federal investigators previously have said that Binalshibh, in particular, has not been an entirely reliable source of information. In its final report published last month, the 9/11 Commission said evaluating the credibility of interrogations was "challenging."

In the new summaries, at least some information attributed to Binalshibh is contradicted by other information. For example, Binalshibh is quoted in the summaries as saying Motassadeq had no involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks. But he is also quoted as saying two key al-Qaida operatives, a Yemeni named Tawfiq bin Attash, and an Indonesian known as Hambali, had no involvement in the attacks.

There is substantial other information, some of it detailed in the 9/11 Commission's reports, implicating those two men in critical roles in planning the attacks.

After reviewing the interrogation summaries, Presiding Judge Ernst-Rainer Schudt said: "We have to think about what this means for the trial."

German prosecutors have been under pressure from politicians and the media since Motassadeq's arrest in 2001. He was convicted last year and sentenced to 15 years in prison. But he won a retrial after a second alleged Moroccan accomplice, Abdelghani Mzoudi, was acquitted of similar charges. The judge in Mzoudi's case said the defendant couldn't receive a fair trial without testimony from suspects in U.S. custody.

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