Hamburg:Mounir al-Motassadeq, the first man ever convicted of a role in the Sep 11,2001, terrorist attacks faces court for a fifth time on Friday during which hecould get a jail term of up to 15 years.

Security will be tight at the courthouse in the northernGerman city of Hamburgwhere the Islamist was convicted in 2005 of terrorism and sentenced to sevenyears in jail. A further conviction on 246 counts of accessory to murder wasadded on appeal last year.

After two full-scale trials and two appeals, Motassadeq, 32,will this time only face an abbreviated trial on five hearing days stretchinginto February to determine a suitable punishment for assisting the killings ofthe hijack victims.

Ladislav Anisic, a lawyer representing the Moroccan, hasforecast the trial will be quick.

 "They'll be over and done with in three days," hesaid.

The Hamburgjudges, who do not have the power to question the conviction, are expected toincrease the seven-year term.

The long-running legal saga has turned on how muchMotassadeq, a Moroccan studying electrical engineering in Germany, could have known about the plans of hisfriends, led by suicide pilot Mohammed Atta, who crashed one passenger jet intothe WorldTradeCenter.

The trial court ruled that Motassadeq was in the terroristcell, and the appeal judges added that he must have known in advance that allthe occupants of the four hijacked planes would be killed.

Only one other 9/11 accessory, Zacarias Moussaoui, also ofMoroccan descent, has been tried. He received life imprisonment on May 4 lastyear from a UScourt.

Several other alleged 9/11 conspirators who were not amongthe 19 suicide attackers are still at large or in custody without trial.

Motassadeq's odyssey through the courts began with hisOctober 2001 arrest as German police uncovered his association with Atta. Hewas given the maximum 15-year sentence in 2003 but at a retrial, which ended inAugust 2005, was convicted of terrorism only.

Much of the legal argument over his case was about whetherhe could have foreseen in conversations with Atta the extraordinary damage tobe inflicted by the attacks, with two of the world's highest buildingscollapsing and 3,000 people killed.

Later comments by terrorist leader Osama bin Laden suggestedthat even the terrorist kingpin did not realise that the fires caused by thecrashed jets would melt the steel frames of the WorldTradeCentertowers in New York.

Motassadeq, who is married with at least one child, hasspent long periods free on bail in Hamburg,but was barred from resuming his studies. German authorities plan to expel himafter his jail term.

Illustrating the difficulties German judges have had interpretingthe evidence, Abdel-Ghani Mzoudi, another associate of the Hamburgsuicide pilots, was acquitted on similar evidence to that brought againstMotassadeq and went home to Morocco.

Both Mzoudi and Motassadeq were extreme Islamists who hadtrained at Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan,then returned to Hamburg.

German authorities gave up trying to imprison otherassociates.

An inquiry against Mamoun Darkanzali, a Syrian-born Hamburgtrader, was abandoned last year for lack of evidence, though he knew thesuicide pilots and had business dealings with bin Laden's group.

Another Syrian-born man, Mohammad Haidar Sammar, allegedlyrecruited the Hamburgattackers to Al Qaeda. German police questioned but did not arrest him. He isnow in Syrian custody awaiting trial.

Christian Ganczarski, a German who converted to Islam, iscurrently in French custody. German authorities said his close contacts to binLaden were insufficient to lead to charges under German law.