Washington: Terrorists plotted the 9/11 attacks for nearly two years and chose the World Trade Centre (WTC) towers as their prime target, a German prosecutor has said.

Unravelling the details of the activities of the Hamburg cell of the plotters, which produced the extremists who attacked the US, prosecutor Kay Nehm said one of them had even bragged of killing thousands at the World Trade Centre a year before the attacks.

"There will be thousands of dead," Marwan Al-Shehhi reportedly told a German librarian in the spring of 2000. "You will think of me," Nehm was quoted as saying in a report published by 'USA Today'.

Al-Shehhi is believed to have flown United Airlines Flight 175, which hit the south tower of the WTC. The details of the plot are contained in a 90-page indictment against Mounir El Motassadeq, 28, the only person in German custody in connection with the September 11 attacks.

The indictment charges El Motassadeq with belonging to a terrorist group and with 3000 counts of being an accessory to murder. However, he has denied any involvement in the crimes.

Motassadeq did everything but pilot a jet on September 11, Nehm said adding he was "just as involved in preparing the attacks until the end as the others".

US investigators have maintained that the hijacking plot was hatched in Afghanistan, developed in Hamburg and financed through the United Arab Emirates.

"All members of this cell shared the same religious convictions. At the centre of this stood the hatred of the world Jewry and the United States," Nehm said.

PTI