(Xinhua) -- Mounir al-Motassadeq, who was to be convicted for involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, has filed an appeal to Germany's highest court against his upcoming sentencing hearing, court officials said on Friday. The lawyer for Motassadeq, who is in a remand jail in the northern city of Hamburg, sent the appeal to the German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, according to a report by the German news agency DPA.
Last month, a court in Hamburg convicted Motassadeq of being a member of a terrorist cell and added a conviction of being an accessory to murder and a hearing has been scheduled for next month to consider increasing Motassadeq's current seven-year jail sentence.
Motassadeq, who first came to Germany in 1993 and moved to Hamburg in 1995, where he studied electrical engineering in college, was convicted in Germany of over 3,000 counts of accessory to murder and of direct relation to the September 11 attacks, but the conviction was rejected on appeal.
On February 7, 2006, Germany's Federal Constitutional Court ordered an early release of Motassadeq. The highest court of Germany ruled there was an absence of proof that Motassadeq was informed about the September 11 terrorist plot.