Alleged 9/11 Terrorist on Trial in Germany

H A M B U R G, Germany, Aug. 18, 2003 -- Federal prosecutor Matthias Krauss' opening statement was short but not sweet: "Abdelghani Mzoudi is charged with 3,066 counts of accessory to murder and with being a member of a terrorist organization."

Mzoudi, 30, was a close friend of Mohamed Atta — suspected of being the ringleader of the suicide hijackers who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

Krauss told a Hamburg courtroom the Moroccan played a crucial role in providing logistical support to Atta and his Hamburg al Qaeda cell in the Sept. 11 plot.

"It is beyond doubt that his actions were designed to support the Sept. 11 terror attacks," Krauss said Thursday.

The defendant, with a full beard and dressed in a dark blue sweater, listened quietly to the charges against him. His lawyers have told the court that he will not testify in his own defense.

However, he did answer the judge's questions about his personal background and his upbringing in Morocco.

"My mother taught me the good values of Islam: honesty, not to steal and not to kill," he said, "and my father took me to our neighborhood mosque to pray since I was 7 years old."

The 92-page indictment alleges Mzoudi helped to conceal the whereabouts of Atta, as well as the whereabouts of the other suicide hijackers Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ramsi Binalshibh, a Yemeni in U.S. custody. Binalshibh is believed to have been the Hamburg cell's key contact with Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terror group.

Mzoudi is also accused of taking care of financial matters for Hamburg cell member Zakariya Essabar while Essabar was at an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.Essabar disappeared shortly before Sept. 11, 2001 and is wanted by Germany on an international arrest warrant.

"Mzoudi allowed the suicide hijackers Al-Shehhi and Atta to use his Hamburg mailing address while they were in the U.S. taking flight lessons," Krauss told the court. "He was such close friend of Atta that he signed Atta's will."

Explosives Found in Atta’s Suitcase?

"Not quite so," said defense attorney Michael Rosenthal in his opening statement.

He told the court that he will challenge the veracity of U.S. evidence to get his client acquitted. "Some of the U.S. evidence assembled by the German investigators simply does not add up and the defense team is going to very aggressively follow up on some conflicting evidence we received."

Rosenthal cited, as an example, that Atta's suitcase not make the connection onto the fatal flight. "However, the case files say that the suitcase had been singled out by a sniffing dog and because the officials were suspicious that the suitcase might contain explosives, they held it back," Rosenthal told ABCNEWS. "Why they stopped the suitcase from making it onto the plane but not Atta himself beats me."

The FBI denies there was any explosive in Atta's bag, and says it didn't make the flight because of a tight connection. U.S. national security officials familiar with the details of the Sept. 11 investigation confirmed the same to ABCNEWS.

Rosenthal would not elaborate further but told ABCNEWS that there are more documents that show conflicting evidence. "I have a few more examples that make the defense team suspicious about the U.S. investigator's work, but I will put those on the table at an appropriate time," he said.

Rosenthal also said his suspicions did not extend to conspiracy theories that the U.S. government intentionally had ignored warnings about attacks to take place, but he said the administration quickly found "benefits" in the attacks.

"It certainly was not planned by an American authority, but it came [in] handy. The right event at the right time," he said.

Presiding Judge Klaus Ruehle and his panel of 5 judges listened quietly to the opening statements of prosecutors and defense attorneys.

Mzoudi is being tried in the same courtroom in Hamburg where fellow Moroccan Mounir El Motassadeq — the first accused Sept. 11 terrorist ever to stand trial anywhere — was convicted six months ago and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

If convicted, Mzoudi could be sentenced to 15 years in prison, the maximum penalty in Germany for murder.