HAMBURG, Germany - A member of the official US commission on the September 11, 2001 attacks said Wednesday he would testify in the trial of a key suspect here next week but face restrictions on what he can say.
Commission senior counsel Dietrich Snell, a deputy attorney general in New York state, said in a fax read aloud before the court retrying Moroccan national Mounir El Motassadeq that he would appear next Tuesday.
He said he would give a detailed description of the findings of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, but would be required to leave out anything deemed classified by the US government.
Snell said this would include details about terror suspects in US custody. Both the prosecution and the defense have sought more information on Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, two suspected organizers of the attacks.
The US Justice Department sent a fax to the court in September saying that the suspects had told investigators that Motassadeq had no prior knowledge of the attacks, but warned that they might not be telling the truth.
Snell added that his testimony would be based on the final report of the bipartisan commission published last July, which investigated the attacks on New York and Washington that claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people.
An FBI agent who testified at the trial in late January was unable to answer a number of questions put to him because the information was deemed classified by the US government.
Motassadeq is charged with accessory to the murder of some 3,000 people in the suicide hijackings and membership in a terrorist organization.
He was jailed for 15 years in February 2003 for his alleged role in the plot. But in March 2004 a new trial was ordered because US authorities refused to allow Binalshibh or Sheikh Mohammed to testify.
03/02/2005 15:07 GMT