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Doubting
US Evidence, Germany To Drop 9/11 Charge
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Motassadeq denied charges of links to any terrorist organization
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LONDON,
July 18 (IslamOnline.net) – German prosecutors will drop the most
serious charges against the only man convicted for the 11 September
attacks on the United States, because they fear that crucial American
evidence was obtained by torturing detainees, The Observer
reported on Sunday, July 18.
The
move is based on the fact that evidence against Mounir Motassadeq is
"weak," reported the British newspaper.
Motassadeq,
29, admitted going to a training camp in Afghanistan, signing 9/11
alleged hijack leader Mohamed Atta's will and transferring thousands
of dollars to accounts controlled by Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the
plot's main planners, The Observer said.
During
his trial, he denied
charges of links to any
terrorist organization or complicity in the 9/11 attacks.
Motassadeq
said Binalshibh's statements made to US interrogators after his
capture in Pakistan, which the Americans were refusing to make
available, would have confirmed he knew nothing of the 9/11
conspiracy.
An
appeals court quashed
his original conviction and 15-year sentence last April on the ground
that he should have had access to the statements.
The
appeal judges said without testimony from Binalshibh or the plot's
mastermind, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the case that Motassadeq was an
active conspirator was weak. His retrial starts next month.
A
senior German intelligence official told The Observer that,
although the US Justice Department has now supplied the interrogation
records, they would be virtually useless in their present state.
After
the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal and Washington's admission that a range
of coercive methods were authorized against terrors suspects, a German
court would need firm evidence that the statements were truly
voluntary, he stressed.
The
Iraqi abuse scandal exploded onto the world stage on April 29 after
the CBS news network published several graphic
photos of Iraqi
detainees tortured and sexually abused by American soldiers at the
infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
In
a damning report presented to the administration in February, U.S.
Major General Antonio Taguba found numerous "sadistic,
blatant and wanton criminal abuses"
at the prison complex.
Amnesty
International condemned
in May last year the US breaches of international law in Guantanamo
under the cloak of its so-called global war on terror.
The
New York-based Human Rights Watch had further said that Washington
must promptly investigate and address charges
of torture of suspected the
Guantanamo detainees or risk criminal prosecution.
Click
here
to read The Observer report.
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