BERLIN - The German authorities investigating a Moroccan man on trial on charges that he was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States say there is evidence that he had contact with a Saudi diplomat as well as the leaders of an extremist group in Saudi Arabia.
But German officials said that despite their requests for help checking these leads, responses had not been forthcoming from either American or Saudi authorities.
In Washington, a Justice Department spokesman who declined to be named called questions about the German authorities' requests "too sensitive" for comment.
After the arrest of the Moroccan, Mounir el-Motassadeq, in Hamburg last year, the police found the business card of an official in the Saudi Embassy in Berlin in his apartment. Prosecutors say they also found records of numerous calls to Saudi Arabia, which have since been traced to members of an extremist group in Riyadh called Dar al-Assima al-Nahr. Cell phone numbers of the group's leaders were found saved on Motassadeq's computer.
Prosecutors say that the first of these calls was made in December 2000, about the same time that the Sept. 11 suicide pilots began their flight training in the United States.
Since the arrest, German officials say, key questions in their requests for information from Saudi Arabia as well as from American investigators have gone unanswered.
German officials say they sent a 15-page letter to the U.S. Justice Department on March 15 detailing their case against Motassadeq and asking for information relevant to the case. The letter provided the Saudi telephone numbers and specifically requested help from the FBI.
When the trial against Motassadeq opened in September, German prosecutors said they had not yet received a response from the Justice Department. Details from the American investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks arrived in October, nearly seven months after the request, but without any information about Motassadeq's telephone calls to Saudi Arabia.
The German authorities also requested information from the Saudi government. In a letter to German investigators, the Saudi Embassy denied any knowledge of Motassadeq. According to a German official, they still have received no response concerning the telephone calls.
A department spokesman denied that there had been a breakdown in relations. "The cooperation we've had with our allies is going along smoothly," he said. "There have been times where maybe there have been some rough spots, but we've gotten by them and everything is fine."