Berlin: Had to free 9/11 suspect
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Mzoudi, charged with thousands of counts of aiding and abetting murder, was freed Thursday.
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BERLIN, Germany (Reuters) -- The German government has defended its decision to pass on U.S. intelligence to a court trying a September 11 suspect, saying it had no choice because the information was material to the case.
A Moroccan on trial for conspiring with the September 11 plotters was dramatically freed on Thursday after the judge said a secret source had testified the defendant was not part of the core "Hamburg cell" that planned the suicide hijacks.
The judge and prosecution both said this could only have emerged from details passed on to Germany from the United States about the interrogation of Ramzi bin al-Shaibah, an al Qaeda leader captured in Pakistan last year and now in U.S. custody.
U.S. Attorney-General John Ashcroft described the freeing of defendant Abdelghani Mzoudi as disappointing, and pointedly remarked that the United States had a different system of judging defendants while protecting national security.
But a justice ministry spokeswoman in Berlin said the government had no choice but to pass on the material to the Hamburg court. Under German law, authorities are obliged to make available evidence which could favor the defendant. (Germany frees 9/11 suspect)
"These documents were seen as material, or important, for this trial," the spokeswoman told a government news conference.
She said it was decided, after evaluating the information, that it must be handed to the court.
"How the court evaluates the evidence, the sources, the witnesses, is a matter for the independent court."
Crucial evidence
An interior ministry spokesman said it was up to individual countries how their security forces obtained information, what they did with it and how they made it available for use in judicial proceedings.
He said Germany had its own way of handling this, just as it respected the way such matters were dealt with in the United States.
Earlier in the trial of Mzoudi, the German government refused a defense request to hand over U.S. transcripts of the interrogation of bin al-Shaibah.
But the Federal Crime Office did release the crucial information -- without revealing its source but presumed to come from bin al-Shaibah -- that only bin al-Shaibah himself and three Hamburg-based suicide hijackers belonged to the core planning cell and had prior knowledge of the attacks.
According to this account, this cell included neither Mzoudi nor Mounir El Motassadeq, another Moroccan who was convicted last February of abetting the attacks and is serving a 15-year German jail term, prompting the judge to order Mzoudi's release.
Motassadeq's lawyers have also demanded his immediate release in the light of the new evidence, and a court decision is expected in the next few days.
Mzoudi's trial continues, although he has been released from custody and independent legal sources say he now looks likely to be acquitted.
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Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
