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Moroccan Mounir El Motassadeq awaits his sentencing hearing, for his role in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, at a court in Hamburg. Motassadeq was sentenced to 15 years in prison. (Xinhua/AFP Photo) Photo Gallery >>>

    BERLIN, Jan. 8 (Xinhua) -- Mounir al-Motassadeq, who was convicted for involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, was sentenced on Monday by a German court to a 15-year imprisonment.

    The trial took place at a high-security court in the northern German city of Hamburg, where Motassadeq had lived.

    Reports reaching here from Hamburg quoted Federal Prosecutor Walter Hemberger as saying that Motassadeq plotted the deaths of people of many nationalities including Germans.

    The person deserved the toughest punishment under German law, Hemberger said.

    However, Motassadeq, who was a close friend of the three suicide attackers in the "9.11" terrorist attacks, insisted again that he was innocent. "There never was a terrorist organization in Hamburg," he said.

    Motassadeq was first convicted in 2003 and then in 2005 of being a member of a terrorist group.

    Early in 2006, federal appeal judges added more conviction of accessory to the murder of 246 people on the four hijacked planes on September 11, 2001.

    Motassadeq first came to Germany in 1993 and moved to Hamburg in 1995, where he studied electrical engineering in college.