A Moroccan charged with helping the September 11th suicide hijackers has told a German court of his close ties with the plotters and how he gave them money.
He denied, however, that he knew anything of their attack plans.
Mr Mounir El Motassadeq described the power of attorney he had for Marwan Al Shehi, who US officials say flew the second hijacked aircraft that smashed into the World Trade Center.
The 28-year-old Moroccan electrical engineering student was arrested last November and is charged with being an accessory to 3,045 murders in New York and Washington and with belonging to the radical Islamic cell in Hamburg that is accused of leading the attacks.
Prosecutors say he sent money from Al Shehi's Hamburg bank account to the hijackers to cover costs related to their US residence permit applications and flight training.
Mr Motassadeq said he had mostly just paid Al Shehi's gas bills and rent in Hamburg but had also transferred about $2,500 at the end of 2000 to another account for Al Shehi, who he believed was in Afghanistan at the time.
Prosecutors say that by late 2000 Al Shehi was already in the United States and taking flying lessons with other plotters including the ringleader, Mohammed Atta, who is suspected of flying the first plane into the World Trade Center.
"I thought Atta was in Malaysia and Al Shehi in Afghanistan," Mr Motassadeq told Judge Albrecht Mentz.
The trial is the first anywhere of a suspected September 11th conspirator. It is expected to last several months and shed light on the network blamed for the devastating attack as well as Germany's role in unwittingly harboring key perpetrators.
Mr Motassadeq faces life in prison if he is found guilty by the five-judge panel in Hamburg's Higher Regional Court.
The trial resumes next Tuesday.