Germany's top appeals court ruled on Friday that a Moroccan friend of the September 11 hijackers should be returned to jail while he waits to receive a new sentence for abetting mass murder.
The ruling overturns previous decisions by Hamburg courts, which had allowed Mounir El Motassadeq, who has been on bail since February, to remain free until his return to court. No date has been set for that appearance. "The arrest has been made," a spokesman for the federal prosecutors office in Karlsruhe told Reuters. Prosecutors had argued there was an increased risk Motassadeq would flee Germany and he should therefore be taken into custody.
On Thursday, the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe ruled 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 guilty of abetting mass murder. It said he should return to court to receive a new, harsher prison sentence of up to 15 years. He had spent more than two years in prison already.
Last year a court convicted Motassadeq of belonging to a terrorist organisation and handed him a 7-year jail sentence. But it 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 overturned that verdict on Thursday, ruling Motassadeq, 32, was an accessory in the deaths of 246 passengers and crew members who died on four planes that crashed on September 11. Motassadeq's lawyer Ladislav Anisic was quoted as telling Spiegel online that he planned a legal challenge to the arrest.
"We will be seeking to get Mr Motassadeq freed until the court determines the length of his sentence," Anisic said. An American man whose mother was on the American Airlines flight piloted by Atta said he was pleased about the arrest. "We were a little bit shocked at the decision from the Hamburg court and felt it was quite dangerous," Dominic J. Puopolo Jr said in a telephone interview.
"We weren't able to understand how someone could be convicted of literally helping to kill my mother and then just check in (with police) on a daily basis."