According to al-Guardian, Germany is going to drop all charges against Mounir Motassadeq, a key 9/11 conspirator who admitted being part of the plot—because they are afraid the US used “torture” to make Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Shaeikh Mohammed talk about Motassadeq: Germany to drop 9/11 plot charges. (Hat tip: Aboo-Hoo-Hoo.)

Notice: they have no evidence whatsoever that these master terrorists were tortured. Just a vague fear that they might have been.

German prosecutors are preparing to drop all the most serious charges against the only man convicted for the 11 September attacks, because they fear that crucial American evidence was obtained by torturing detainees.

The case is set to deepen further the rift between Germany and the United States, which accused the Germans of failing to act against terror when it first emerged three of the hijacking pilots had lived in Hamburg. ‘No doubt they will complain bitterly,’ a German anti-terrorist official said yesterday. ‘Let us say we have different views on how to handle this problem.’

Mounir Motassadeq, 29, an alleged member of al-Qaeda’s Hamburg cell based around hijack leader Mohamed Atta’s apartment, admitted going to a training camp in Afghanistan, signing Atta’s will and transferring thousands of dollars to accounts controlled by Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the plot’s main planners.

But an appeals court quashed his original conviction and 15-year sentence last April on the ground that he should have had access to statements Binalshibh made to US interrogators after his capture in Pakistan.

Motassadeq claimed that Binalshibh’s statements, which the Americans were refusing to make available, would have confirmed he knew nothing of the 9/11 conspiracy. The appeal judges said without testimony from Binalshibh or the plot’s mastermind, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the case that Motassadeq was an active conspirator was weak. His retrial starts next month.

A senior German intelligence official told The Observer that, although the US Justice Department has now supplied the interrogation records, they would be virtually useless in their present state. ‘They contain no details as to where Binalshibh and Mohamed were questioned, nor whether torture or other forms of force were used to make them talk,’ he said. ‘Their contents may be information and they may be disinformation.’