BERLIN, Sept. 21 (Xinhuanet) -- One of the suicide pilot in the Sept. 11 attacks made no secret of his trip to the United States, a witness testified Tuesday at the retrial of accused Sept. 11 conspirator Mounir El Motassadeq.

    Ziad Jarrah, a Lebanese student suspected of piloting United Airlines flight 93 when it crashed in Pennsylvania, came to Germany in 1996 for studying aerospace engineering.

    The second cousin of Jarrah told the Hamburg State Court that Jarrah had told friends he was going to the United States but not made public his plan of learning piloting. "We thought he was over there to get job experience," he said.

    A key issue in the retrial of Motassadeq is whether he had some degree of foreknowledge about the terrorist plot.

    Motassadeq himself has denied knowing details about Jarrah's intention.

    Jarrah dropped his study in 2000 and left for the United States to receive pilot training at Florida flight school for several months.

    Motassadeq was studying in Hamburg when he became a friend of Mohammed Atta who later flew one of the two hijacked planes into New York's World Trade Center in 2001.

    Last year, the Hamburg State Court sentenced Motassadeq to 15 years in prison on charges of providing logistic help to an al Qaeda cell in Hamburg.

    But the ruling was overturned in March by the Federal Constitutional Court, Germany's supreme court.

    Motassadeq's retrial began on Aug. 10. Enditem