Hamburg, Germany ? A Moroccan on trial for helping the Hamburg al-Qaida cell that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks testified Wednesday about wide contacts with the suicide hijackers, including a money transfer he made to one of the pilots.

But Mounir el Motassadeq, 28, continues to maintain his innocence in the first trial of a Sept. 11 suspect. He faces a possible life sentence if convicted of membership in a terrorist organization and more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder.

El Motassadeq testified Wednesday that he sent $2,500 from the account of one of the suicide hijackers to Ramzi Binalshibh, believed to be the cell’s chief contact with Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network. Binalshibh, a 30-year-old Yemeni, was arrested last month in Karachi, Pakistani, and is a suspected planner of the suicide hijackings.

El Motassadeq also acknowledged knowing a third Hamburg-based suicide pilot, Ziad Jarrah. He is accused of aiding Jarrah, Marwan al-Shehhi and suspected lead hijacker Mohamed Atta, who all lived undetected in Hamburg before piloting two planes into New York’s World Trade Center and a third jetliner that crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.

Cross-examined by prosecutors Wednesday, el Motassadeq said he was frightened to say he knew the men when investigators first questioned him days after the attacks.

“I didn’t want to say I knew (Jarrah), al-Shehhi or the others because it was dangerous,” he said in Hamburg state court on the second day of his trial.

El Motassadeq said he transferred funds from al-Shehhi’s account to Ramzi Binalshibh, now in U.S. custody, after receiving a handwritten fax from Binalshibh in Yemen ordering the money to be sent.

The transfer was made in August 2000. El Motassadeq said he thought it was meant for al-Shehhi, who he believed was in Afghanistan.

Prosecutors allege, however, that he transferred money to fund al-Shehhi’s and Atta’s flight lessons in the United States. The pair were at the Huffman Aviation flight school in Venice, Fla., from July 2000 to January 2001.

The fax “said Marwan needs money, and I knew he was in Afghanistan,” el Motassadeq said, speaking fluent German.

“I didn’t know from any of these people that they were in America.”

El Motassadeq has testified that Atta, al-Shehhi and Binalshibh went to Afghanistan at the end of 1999 saying they were going to Chechnya to help rebels fight Russian forces. When they returned, they said they were not needed in the breakaway Russian republic, he said.

On Wednesday, he said Jarrah went to Afghanistan for training as well, about the same time, also saying he wanted to fight in Chechnya.

El Motassadeq has said he learned to fire a Kalashnikov assault rifle at the Afghan camp, but was unaware it was run by al-Qaida until he got there. His attorneys argue the trip does not prove el Motassadeq was a terrorist.