HAMBURG, Germany - A lawyer for a Moroccan man being tried for complicity in the September 11, 2001 attacks demanded on Tuesday that US President George W. Bush be called to give evidence.
The lawyer, Udo Jacob, said that Bush should provide testimony about allegations that US intelligence operatives tortured suspected organisers of the suicide hijackings who had been abducted and held abroad.
"We fear that concrete torture measures could have been used during their questioning," said Jacob, who is defending Mounir El Motassadeq at a court in Hamburg, northern Germany.
Motassadeq is charged with accessory to the murder of some 3,000 people in the attacks and membership of a terrorist organisation.
He was jailed for 15 years in February 2003 for his role, but in March 2004 a new trial was ordered because US authorities refused to allow key witnesses Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to testify.
In testimony on Tuesday, a member of the official US commission on the attacks, Dietrich Snell, said that his team had been unable to question the two men, were unaware of how they were being treated or where they were being held.
They are both believed to be in US custody.
Both the prosecution and the defense have sought more information about Binalshibh and Sheikh Mohammed, two other suspected organisers of the attacks.
The US Justice Department sent a fax to the court in August saying that the suspects had told investigators that Motassadeq had no prior knowledge of the plot, but warned that they might not be telling the truth.
Snell's testimony was 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.
He was obliged not discuss anything deemed classified by the US government.
03/08/2005 14:39 GMT