A 28-year-old Moroccan national has been jailed for 15 years by a German court after being convicted of being an accessory to murder in the world's first trial over the September 11th, 2001 attacks.
Mounir El Motassadeq was also convicted of attempted murder, grievous bodily harm and membership of a terrorist organisation.
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Motassadeq was a friend of three suicide hijackers based in Hamburg who ploughed passenger planes into targets in the United States on September 11th, 2001.
Prosecutors say the married father of two provided key logistical support to what authorities call the Hamburg cell of the al-Qaeda network which has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Security experts, speaking on ZDF public television Wednesday, said they feared that a conviction against him could lead to an increased risk of attacks in Germany.
Motassadeq was charged with being an accessory to the deaths of 3,045 people and membership of a terrorist organization.
He now faces a sentence of 15 years in prison.
Motassadeq said that he was unaware until he arrived that the group was run by bin Laden's network and that it was common at the time for young Muslims to pursue weapons training in such camps.
The defense team argued that the prosecution's case is built solely on guilt by association and anti-Muslim stereotypes.
Motassadeq vehemently pleaded his innocence, telling the judges that he like everyone else in the courtroom only learned of the attacks when he saw them on television and that he had been shocked by the "catastrophe".
"I hope that something like September 11 never happens again," he said on the penultimate day of the trial.
AFP