Suspect denies role in 9/11 meeting
By CNN Madrid Bureau Chief Al Goodman
MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- An al Qaeda suspect on trial in a Spanish court Tuesday denied helping arrange a July 2001 meeting that U.S. and Spanish authorities say brought together two key plotters in the September 11 attacks.
"Who am I to prepare this? I don't know them," Moroccan-born Driss Chebli, 33, said about the two men who allegedly attended the meeting: Mohammed Atta, pilot of the first plane to crash into New York's World Trade Center, and Ramzi Binalshibh, a suspected aide to Osama bin Laden who has been in U.S. custody since 2002.
Chebli spoke Tuesday as testimony concluded for the 24 defendants in the Madrid trial, the largest to date in Europe against al Qaeda suspects. Chebli is one of three suspects, out of the total 24, who are charged with helping to plan the September 11 attacks.
Chebli said he did not meet another prime suspect in the trial, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas -- the alleged al Qaeda leader in Spain for whom prosecutors say Chebli was an aide -- until after the July 2001 meeting in northeastern Spain between Atta and Binalshibh.
Yarkas, a 42-year-old born in Syria, is also accused of helping to set up the meeting, which he has denied.
Chebli said that in 2001 he worked as a construction mason in the northeastern town of Reus, near the site of the meeting, but insisted he left Reus in May 2001.
He admitted Tuesday that he knew Mohamed Belfatmi, 29, an Algerian who left Spain shortly before the September 11 attacks, headed for Pakistan, and who is suspected of helping to arrange the July 2001 meeting in Spain. He remains a fugitive.
Chebli also said he knew and had done construction work in Madrid for Moroccan-born Amer Azizi, who is also suspected of helping to plan the July 2001 meeting. Spanish authorities seek Azizi for the September 11 attacks and also in connection with the Madrid train bombings last year that killed 191 people.
The third prime suspect is Syrian-born Ghasoub al Abrash Ghalyoun, 39, who is accused of making videotapes in 1997 of the World Trade Center Towers towers and other U.S. landmarks and later passing them to al Qaeda operatives.
Chebli, Yarkas, and Ghalyoun could each face a sentence of more than 62,000 years in jail if convicted -- a figure combining sentences for murdering each person who died in the September 11 attacks.
The other 21 defendants face nine to 18 years in jail if convicted on charges of belonging to or collaborating with al Qaeda, forgery, fraud and weapons violations.
All 24 defendants -- mainly of Syrian or Moroccan origin with residence in Spain -- have professed innocence in their testimony at a special courthouse prepared for the trial on the outskirts of Madrid.
The trial started April 22 and now enters a second phase, with testimony from police officers and other experts in the investigation.
The trial is expected to continue through June.
The best-known defendant is al Jazeera correspondent Tayseer Allouni, who covered the war in Afghanistan and had the last known interview with Osama bin Laden in late 2001.
The Syrian-born Allouni, 50, is charged with belonging to al Qaeda and faces nine years in prison if convicted. On Monday, he denied the charges and said investigators had misinterpreted his wiretapped conversations that they had monitored.
