And speaking of the war on terror....

From CNN for February 5.

Hamburg, Germany - A Moroccan man accused of assisting the September 11 hijackers has been cleared by a court in the German city of Hamburg due to a lack of evidence.

Abdel-Ghani Mzoudi was charged with more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder, based on the death toll in the suicide hijackings in the U.S, and being a member of a terrorist organisation, the Hamburg cell of al Qaeda.

Mzoudi admitted having been at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, but despite his having been "part of the Islamistic scene in Hamburg," in the words of prosecutors, they could never show any actual connection between Mzoudi and the hijackers other than the simple fact that he knew them - which would seem unremarkable if he was indeed "part of the scene."

Meanwhile, others fretted over the outcome.

Terror experts are worried the case demonstrates the West is ill equipped to defend itself.

"It is a war. In a war situation you need special laws and al Qaeda finds that it can operate wonderfully well in the democratic free society because they can move about freely and the courts cannot convict them," M. J. Gohel of the Asia Pacific Foundation told CNN.

"Evidence? We don't need no stinking evidence!"

Footnote: What Mr. Gohel apparently regards as the dangerously naive functioning of the judicial system did not prevent the same court from sentencing Mounir el Motassadeq to 15 years in jail last year in Germany's other 9/11-related case.