The 31-year-old Moroccan, Mounir al-Motassadeq was found guilty of belonging to a terrorist group on Friday and sentenced to seven years in jail by the Hamburg high court. (Xinhua/AFP photo)

    BERLIN, Aug. 19 (Xinhuanet) -- A German court on Friday sentenced a Moroccan with connection to the Sept. 11 hijackers to seven years imprisonment for his membership in a terrorist organization.

    At the retrial, the Hamburg high court found the 31-year-old man, Mounir al-Motassadeq, guilty of being member of a eight-man terrorist cell led by Mohammed Atta who flew one of the two hijacked planes into New York's World Trade Center in 2001 but acquitted him of involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks.

    "The complete picture shows the accused to have been a member of terrorist organization, but not to have been an accessory to the murderers of Sept. 11," presiding Judge Ernst-Rainer Schudt said.

    The court believed the Hamburg cell members only played a role of carrying out terrorist plan made by the al-Qaeda terrorist group and the Sept. 11 attacks were plotted in Afghanistan instead of Hamburg, Schudt said.

    Motassadeq remained silent during the retrial process.

    German Interior Minister Otto Schily hailed the jail sentence in al-Motassadeq's case." The verdict sends a clear signal of our determination as a nation in fight against terrorism," Schily saidin Berlin.

    "It is also an encouraging incentive to law enforcement authority," he added.

    Motassadeq was studying in Hamburg when he became a friend of Mohammed Atta.

    The Hamburg State Court in 2003 sentenced him 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 2004 by the Federal Constitutional Court, Germany's supreme court.

31-year-old Moroccan, Mounir al-Motassadeq (L)was found guilty of belonging to a terrorist group on Friday and sentenced to seven years in jail by the Hamburg high court. (Xinhua/AFP photo)

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