BERLIN, Jan 5 (AFP) - A Jordanian extremist released from a German prison because he gave information about several suspected Islamists has been struck off a UN list of terror suspects, a government spokesman confirmed Wednesday.
"Shadi Abdellah has been removed from the list," an interior minister spokesman said, amid a general reluctance in official German circles to discuss the issue. He would give no further details.
Shadi Mohn Mustafa Abdellah, who was jailed by a German court in 2003 for four years on charges of membership of a terrorist organisation, claimed to have worked briefly for Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
He was released from prison in November after serving more than half his sentence and is now in a witness protection programme in Germany.
The UN's 1267 Committee, which maintains a list of individuals and groups linked to Al-Qaeda and Afghanistan's fundamentalist Taliban movement, notes on its Internet site that Abdellah was removed from the list on December 23.
He had figured on it since 2003.
According to the German press, the government in Berlin put in a request to rehabilitate the 28-year-old Jordanian because he had cooperated with the authorities.
A report in the respected Der Spiegel weekly said that the effort initially met with resistance in the United States, where officials believed that Abdellah had been feigning cooperation with German police.
It said that German Interior Minister Otto Schily intervened and allowed US investigators to question Abdellah, who is now to testify in the US trial of Zacaria Moussaoui, accused of involvement in the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Despite frequent doubts being raised about his credibility, Abdellah gave German investigators important tips about Al-Qaeda suspects, revealed a weapons cache and provided sketches of Afghan terror camps, according to the report in Der Spiegel.
Abdellah has testified in two German trials against Moroccan suspects accused of involvement in plotting the September 11 hijackings.
He claimed he saw them, and four alleged German-based accomplices of Iraq's most wanted man Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, at Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.
The four allegedly plotted with Abdellah, as part of the Palestinian group Al-Tawhid, to attack Jewish targets in Germany on Zarqawi's orders.
01/05/2005 16:10 GMT - AFP