Madrid Suspect Indicted on 9/11 Charges

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Moroccan Allegedly Helped Organize Meeting in Spain to Finalize 9/11 Attacks
By MARIA JESUS PRADES, AP

MADRID, Spain (April 28) - A Moroccan sought in connection with last month's Madrid train bombings was indicted Wednesday on charges of helping plan the Sept. 11 attacks.

Amer Azizi helped organize a meeting in northeast Spain in July 2001 that key plotters in the U.S. attacks, including suspect suicide pilot Mohamed Atta, used to finalize details, Judge Baltasar Garzon said.

Azizi was initially included in an indictment Garzon handed down in September against Osama bin Laden and 34 other terror suspects. Azizi was charged then with belonging to a terrorist organization.

The new indictment charges Azizi with actually helping plan the Sept. 11 attacks. Garzon accused Azizi of multiple counts of murder - ''as many deaths and injuries as were committed'' on Sept. 11.

The indictment was based on information provided by authorities in Britain, Turkey and the United States, Garzon said.

Azizi provided lodging for people who attended the July 2001 meeting in the Tarragona region of Spain and acted as a courier, passing on messages between plotters, Garzon said in the indictment.

The judge described Azizi as the right-hand man of Imad Yarkas, jailed in November 2001 on charges of leading a Spain-based al-Qaida cell that allegedly provided financing and logistics for planners of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Azizi fled Spain in November 2001, shortly after a wave of arrests that netted Yarkas and more than a dozen other al-Qaida suspects.

The Interior Ministry released a photo of Azizi this month, calling him a suspect in the March 11 train bombings in Madrid, in which 191 people died and more than 2,000 were injured.

Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen, remains the only person charged in the United States as a conspirator in the Sept. 11 attacks. Moussaoui, who is awaiting trial in Virginia, has admitted belonging to al-Qaida but denied he was part of the terror plot.

Earlier this month, the only Sept. 11 suspect ever convicted walked out of a German jail less than 2 1/2 years into his 15-year sentence after judges ruled the evidence was too weak to hold him pending a retrial.

Mounir el Motassadeq, a 30-year-old Moroccan, was convicted on more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization. But that conviction was overturned last month by a German court.


04/28/04 13:28 EDT

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