By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Aug. 18, 2004 23:15
HAMBURG - A Moroccan accused of helping the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers was part of a group that raged against the United States "because it defends Israel" and himself approved of Hitler's extermination of the Jews, witnesses testified Wednesday.
One more reason to call the Islamists brown turbans shirts and get it over with.
Sudanese student Ahmed Maglad, 30, testified he met defendant Mounir el Motassadeq while living in Hamburg in 1997 and through him met lead suicide pilot Mohamed Atta, who he said was "aggressively religious" and was always trying to "prove something." Maglad told the Hamburg state court he also knew Ramzi Binalshibh, the suspected contact between al-Qaida and the Hamburg cell that included three of the suicide pilots. "Everybody spoke out against the United States because it defends Israel," Maglad said. The Hamburg group believed that "the foundation of Israel was unjustified, and the Palestinian conflict was always a topic for Atta." Appearing at el Motassadeq's retrial, Maglad said Atta became "too much" for him — one reason he changed schools and moved to Berlin in 1998. He portrayed el Motassadeq as firmly allied with Atta. "Mounir and Atta didn't have any quarrels and Mounir once suggested when I was of a different opinion that I should be quiet," Maglad testified. |