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DAMASCUS - A Syrian security court today sentenced to 12 years in jail a man linked to the Hamburg al Qaeda cell that led the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, human rights advocates said.
Mohammad al-Zammar, a Syrian-German national, is one of scores of people captured by the CIA and secretly transferred to third countries, including Syria, where they faced alleged torture. The practice, which Washington calls "rendition", has drawn condemnation from international human rights groups.
The court initially sentenced Zammar, who is in his 40s, to death on charges of belonging to the banned Muslim Brotherhood movement, but his sentence was then commuted to 12 years in jail.
"This is a grossly unjust verdict," human rights activist Ammar al-Qurabi said.
"They could not prove a link between Zammar and the September attacks so they sentenced him for belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood when he was not wanted by Syria for belonging to the group in the first place," Qurabi said.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which tried to topple Syria's secular government in the 1980s, has been banned for decades. Membership of the group, founded in Egypt in the 1920s, is punishable by death.
Zammar's lawyer Mohanad al-Husni told Reuters his client had always maintained his innocence.
"This religious man had the misfortune of frequenting the same mosques in Hamburg as al Qaeda members. He kept telling the judge he had no organisational links with any Muslim group," Husni said.
Zammar was arrested in Morocco in late 2001 and flown to Syria where he was held at the feared Palestine Branch of Military Intelligence before being transferred recently to Sednaya prison near Damascus.
"He has been subjected to beating and torture I cannot even describe," Husni said. Zammar was visited once by Red Cross officials.
A Council of Europe report said Zammar was flown to Syria on a CIA-linked aircraft in 2001 and that German security officials had visited him in his Syrian prison.
Zammar moved to Germany with his father when he was eight and received German citizenship in 1982.
German authorities questioned Zammar after the Sept. 11 attacks and subsequently released him.
"The Germans had him," Husni said. "They would not have let him go if he had anything to do with the attacks."
- REUTERS
