HAMBURG, Germany - A senior planner of the Sept. 11 attacks says the Hamburg al-Qaida cell was smaller than investigators believe, consisting only of him and three of the suicide pilots, a court was told Wednesday in the first public release of statements by suspects in U.S. custody.
In the eight-page U.S. Justice Department summary of interrogations of two suspects, accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed supports the contention that while the core cell members raged against America in discussions with other Muslims in Hamburg, they kept the plot to attack the United States secret.
However, the Justice Department cautioned that captives may have wanted "to influence as well as inform" in their interrogations and may have withheld information or used "counterinterrogation techniques."
The new evidence emerged at the retrial of Mounir el Motassadeq, a Moroccan accused of providing logistical help to the Hamburg cell, which included suicide pilots Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah.
Ramzi Binalshibh, believed to have been the cell's main contact with al-Qaida, told interrogators "that members of the Hamburg cell included only himself, Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Ziad Jarrah," according to the summary.
He said the group "was well known to many Arab students in Hamburg" and often hosted them at their apartment in Hamburg's Marienstrasse "where they engaged in 'vitriolic anti-U.S. discussions."'
El Motassadeq and his friend, Abdelghani Mzoudi, were among those who regularly would come to "study jihad" or holy war, according to the Binalshibh statement.
But the transcript said Binalshibh maintains that he and the Hamburg hijackers "never discussed actual operations and they never formed a terrorist cell to commit jihad."
The statement backs up el Motassadeq's contention that while he was close to the hijackers, he knew nothing of their plans. He showed no reaction as the documents were read aloud in court Wednesday.
Mohammed, who was not believed to have been a member of the Hamburg cell, is quoted as telling interrogators that he met el Motassadeq in Karachi, Pakistan, to help arrange his travel to an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan.
Mohammed says he did not tell el Motassadeq about the Sept. 11 plans and believes Binalshibh would not have told him either "because of security concerns" - an apparent reference to keeping the circle of conspirators as small as possible.
"Binalshibh was handling support functions for Atta and the Hamburg cell. So there was no need for Motassadeq to have an operational role," the summary of Mohammed's remarks said.
El Motassadeq is being retried on more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization.
His 2003 conviction - the only one of a Sept. 11 suspect so far - was thrown out in March after an appeals court ruled he was unfairly denied testimony from suspects in U.S. custody, such as Binalshibh and Mohammed.
With those statements now on record, the Justice Department said it was considering whether it could provide further information to the Hamburg trial.
Responding to the new evidence, el Motassadeq's lawyer Josef Graessle-Muenscher said talk of a Hamburg cell "is now buried."
He said the interrogation report is a "surprisingly clear and detailed document" that proved his client had nothing to do with planning the Sept. 11 attacks.
Prosecutor Walter Hemberger cited the U.S. report as important evidence that el Motassadeq had contact with top al-Qaida leaders.
"This leads to a lot of questions," he said.
Presiding Judge Ernst-Rainer Schudt said afterward that "we must consider what this means for the trial, and what it means for the volume of evidence we will listen to."
Lack of testimony from witnesses in U.S. custody also played a large role in the February acquittal in the same court of Mzoudi, who faced identical charges.
El Motassadeq is accused of helping pay tuition and other bills for members of the Hamburg al-Qaida cell to allow them to live as students as they plotted the attacks.
But according to Binalshibh's statement, "al-Shehhi had Motassadeq continue to pay his rent to maintain his cover, but Motassadeq did not know that was the reason."
Hemberger said he had "serious doubts" about Binalshibh's statement that only he and the suicide pilots were involved, saying there was solid evidence others played active roles.
"There are doubts whether this is really exonerating, but we must see," he said outside court.
In providing the interrogation reports, the U.S. Justice Department reiterated that it would neither provide Binalshibh or Mohammed as witnesses in person nor allow the German court to submit specific questions to them.
An American whose mother died in the Sept. 11 attacks and has closely followed the investigation urged that the court view the statement with skepticism because al-Qaida members are trained to deceive.
"They're trained in countering interrogations so their credibility should be seriously questioned," said Dominic Puopolo Jr. of Miami Beach, Fla., who joined the proceedings as co-plaintiff as allowed under German law.
Authorities believe Binalshibh packed up and left Germany for Pakistan shortly before Sept. 11. After the attacks, Germany issued an international arrest warrant for him, but it would be exactly one year before U.S. and Pakistani forces found him in Karachi.
Mohammed, the highest-ranking al-Qaida figure in custody, was captured near Islamabad, Pakistan, in 2003.
