The Only 9/11 terrorist conviction gets overturned.

[Timber Loftis]

Well, we saw this coming.

What gets me is that even if the conviction were upheld, this guy only gets 15 years in jail for being an accessory to 3,066 murders. What's with these low punishments?

Today's NY Times:

German Court Overturns Conviction in 9/11 Case
By DESMOND BUTLER

Published: March 4, 2004

KARLSRUHE, Germany, March 4 — Germany's highest court today overturned the verdict against the only person convicted of involvement in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, after his lawyer argued that he had not gotten a fair trial because the United States refused to allow key testimony.

The judge ordered a retrial for the man, Mounir el-Motassadeq, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison in February 2003 after being found guilty of 3,066 counts of accessory to murder and of playing a logistical role for the members of the Qaeda cell in Hamburg that produced three of the Sept. 11 pilots.

Mr. Motassadeq's lawyers had asked the court to overturn the verdict, arguing that he was denied a fair trial because the United States had refused to allow testimony by Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who is believed to have been a member of the cell and central to the Sept. 11 plot.

Andreas Schulz, a lawyer representing the families of victims, said, "This decision will be met by my clients with incomprehension."

Presiding Judge Klaus Tolksdorf said in reading today's verdict that the case would be sent back to the Hamburg lower court for a new trial.

Mr. Motassadeq's lawyer, Josef Graessle-Muenscher, said that without the crucial witness, the rest of the evidence was not sufficient for a conviction. He called the court's decision a "life saving" one for Mr. Motassadeq, who was 28 when convicted. "Fifteen years would have been the end of normal existence," Mr. Graessle-Muenscher said.

He also said that it was not acceptable for a country, in this case the United States, to influence an important legal decision by withholding evidence. Today's decision was a "clear critique of Washington, but not clear enough," the lawyer said, adding that he wished there had been stronger condemnation of what he called American intransigence.

Last month, also citing a refusal by the United States to allow testimony from Mr. bin al-Shibh, the Hamburg court acquitted Abdelghani Mzoudi, the second suspect to be tried on charges of involvement in the attacks, of accessory to murder and membership in Al Qaeda.

The court made clear that it had acquitted Mr. Mzoudi not because it was convinced of his innocence, but because the evidence was not enough to convict him. Prosecutors attributed the acquittal to the Bush administration's reluctance to make captured terrorists available for testimony and to allow prosecutors to make use of intelligence information on the terrorist network.

Last year, the German police submitted a letter to the court summarizing intelligence gained from Mr. bin al-Shibh, in which he told his American captors that neither Mr. Mzoudi nor Mr. Motassadeq was aware of the planning or the details of the attacks.

Though the letter did not name Mr. bin al-Shibh or describe the conditions under which he had been interrogated, his identity was clear from the context.

Mr. Motassadeq went to Germany from Morocco in 1993 as an electrical engineering student.

[Davros]

I am all for a fair trial and I am all for the convistion of the guilty. Some queries on due process TL that you might help me out with. If these same 2 were tried in a US court with the same evidence withheld do you think they would be convicted and the convictions stick (ie is the legal process likely to turn up any different result in the US - assuming all the emotion could be taken out of the cases). If the result would be different, why would that be? I guess I am assuming they would have equal access to the legal system but maybe they would betried in a military court as an enemy non-combatant.

One option for the Germans that might have stopped the appeal [img]smile.gif[/img] is telling the prisoners that if their own legal system couldn't convist them they would extradite them over to the US and let them have a go. They havethe detah penalty over there, so they might have dropped the appeals right there and then [img]smile.gif[/img] .

The other comment I would add on the sentence (and I admit I haven' seen the evidence or judgment) is that 15 years may not be unreasonable when you cannot accurately determine (by lack of evidence) a persons degree of culpability. They barely believed they had enough evidence to convict - hpw do you get to throw the book at them in that case.

I would have to ask why the US didn't make the guy available to give testimony. Surely there are enough options like video link-ups or even taking the trial to the US for a week?

[Timber Loftis]

I don't know why the US didn't make him available for testimony. I wonder -- did the prosecution seek to use him to make its case-in-chief or did the defense seek to use him to rebut the prosecution's evidence? If it was only the defense that wanted to use him, the US may have rightly seen it as a ploy to grandstand a courtroom and use the witness chair as a pulpit for Al Queda and radical Islam or, worse, accomplish some even more nefarious purpose (like pass information from captured terrorists in Gitmo to their Euro network). Who can know why he was not produced? I'd like to know, of course.

Regarding the use of a decreased sentence to reflect relative levels of culpability, that may be the case. One could see a fair system of justice set up to where doubts in culpability reduce the sentence. In the US, the setup is that once guilt is determined, the rightness of the determination is (supposedly) presumed at sentencing. One goes into the sentencing hearing 100% guilty -- the ONE thing you CAN'T argue at sentencing is lack of culpability. You can argue there were mitigating factors, that you have been a good guy until this crime, that your sick momma beat you, etc -- but the court frowns heavily on denying guilt after a conviction. It's seen as a refusal to be rehabilitated. In fact, this is one problem wrongfully-convicted persons face -- no parole board is going to let you out of jail until you admit and accept your guilt.

The article mentions that there was insufficient evidence without the Gitmo prisoner's testimony. If anyone runs across more info on what this prison was supposed to add to the trial, please post it. Thx.