BERLIN, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- Germany's highest court on Thursday found a Moroccan national guilty of accessory to murder in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.

    In a previous verdict from a lower court in Hamburg, judges had convicted Mounir El Motassadeq, a Moroccan living in Germany, of membership of a terrorist organization instead of accessory to murder.

    The Karlsruhe judge on Thursday overturned the Hamburg court's decision and Motassadekon now faces up to 15 years in jail.

    The Karlsruhe court has sent the case back to the Hamburg court for sentencing.

    The Moroccan, who has admitted attending an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, acknowledges he was close to the hijackers but has been insisting that he knew nothing of their plans.

    The presiding judge Klaus Tolksdorf said Thursday that the new trial should decide "the appropriate sentence for the act and his guilt."

    The decision on Thursday deals a harsher penalty for the 32-year-old father of two children who knew a number of the Sept. 11 attackers, including the supposed leader of the suicide cell Mohammed Atta, while they were students together in Hamburg.

    In August 2005, the Hamburg court sentenced Motassadek to seven years in prison following a year-long retrial.