ROUNDUP: Qaeda trainee "can't remember" at Motassadeq trial
Deutsche Presse-Agentur - October 27, 2004, Wednesday

Hamburg - A German national who checked into an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan for training a few days after the September 11, 2001 attacks told a German court Wednesday he "can't remember" any more whether he met any of the surviving conspirators there.

An ethic Albanian from Kosovo by birth, the witness, 30, described how he left Germany on September 12 to join the fundamentalists, just weeks before al-Qaeda and its Taliban protectors were driven out of Afghanistan in a brief U.S.-sponsored war.

He was testifying at the Hamburg retrial of Mounir al-Motassadeq, the only person ever convicted of a role in the attacks on New York and Washington. Motassadeq, earlier sentenced to 15 years in jail, is free on bail during the trial, which is set to run into next year.

His first conviction of membership in a terrorist cell and being an accessory to 3,000 murders was overturned on legal grounds. The witness declined to repeat earlier remarks to police interviewers that at the Kandahar camp he had met with Said Bahaji and Zakariya es-Sabar, who were friends of the three Hamburg-based suicide pilots and are believed to have been part of the conspiracy.

Motassadeq admits being close to the group and doing similar training in a Qaeda camp in the summer of 2000, but denies the charge of being a member of a terrorist cell or assisting in 3,000 murders. "I can't remember any more," said the witness when asked in court Wednesday to describe who he met. He declined to repeat an earlier statement that Haydar Zammar, a former resident of Hamburg who faces possible terrorist charges, had organized the trip out to Afghanistan, and he contended he did not personally know Motassadeq, the defendant.

He said he was taught to use a bazooka, shoulder-fired missiles and other weapons at the camp. He was told while there that Osama bin Laden "had something to do with" the September 11 attacks but it was impressed on him that he should not ask any questions.

The out-of-work shop clerk said he was heading home to Germany when he was arrested in Pakistan on October 5, 2001. He said he was tortured in Pakistani jails and was deported to Germany at the start of November 2001. Motassadeq testified at his first trial about training at the Qaeda camp, but at the current trial he has elected to remain silent. dpa jbp sc
 

October 27, 2004, Wednesday - 15:29:00 Central European Time

SECTION: Politics

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