A German court ruled on Thursday that a Moroccan friend of the September 11 hijackers was guilty of abetting mass murder and must return to court to receive a new, harsher prison sentence of up to 15 years.
Mounir El Motassadeq, a member of a group of radical Arab students in Hamburg which organised the 2001 attacks in which nearly 3,000 people died, was convicted last year of belonging to a terrorist organisation and given a 7-year jail sentence.
But that court cleared him of abetting mass murder, saying he was a low-tier member of the group led by Mohamed Atta, who flew the first plane into New York's World Trade Center.
The Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe, Germany's top appeals court, overturned that verdict on Thursday, ruling that Motassadeq was an accessory in the deaths of 246 passengers and crew members who died on four planes that crashed on September 11.
Two were steered into the World Trade Center, another hit the Pentagon and a fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Motassadeq, 32, must now return to a court in Hamburg, where he has been tried on two previous occasions, to receive a new sentence. He faces up to 15 years in prison. "By assuming organisational tasks, he aided and abetted the attacks," Judge Klaus Tolksdorf told the court. Motassadeq is one of only a handful of men to have been tried in connection with the September 11 attacks.
Abdelghani Mzoudi, another Moroccan man who was friendly with the Hamburg cell members, was acquitted in 2004 of complicity in the attacks. Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, is the only person convicted in a US court in relation to the hijackings. He is serving a life sentence.
"Making sure this man is behind bars and not allowed to get away with what he did is so important for closure for us," Dominic Puopolo Jr., a 40-year old American whose mother was on the American Airlines flight piloted by Atta, told Reuters. "I think all the family members are going to be incredibly happy."
Motassadeq's lawyers have insisted he knew nothing about the September 11 plot. They appealed last year's conviction, saying there was also no proof he belonged to a terrorist organisation. The prosecutors appealed as well, arguing the court should have found Motassadeq guilty of the more serious charge because he knew the hijackers intended to use planes for mass murder.
They have said that under a "division of labour" inside Atta's group, he played an important role in running the financial affairs of other cell members and covering up their absence from Germany in the run-up to the attacks. "The justice system has proven it can handle unusual criminal offences like this," prosecutor Gerhard Altwater said. In his second trial, the judges said Motassadeq knew too little of the cell's plans to convict him as an accessory.