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Witness For The Prosecution
For the past six weeks, Abdelghani Mzoudi seemed likely to be acquitted by a Hamburg court of charges that he helped the terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. Last week prosecutors introduced a surprise witness: a self-proclaimed Iranian intelligence agent, known as Hamid Reza Zakeri, who said Mzoudi handled logistics for the three hijackers based in Hamburg before the terror strikes. "I'm very excited," says Ulrich von Jeinsen, a lawyer representing American relatives of victims of Sept. 11, who under German law can take part in the trial. "This is severe information against Mzoudi."

Others are less excited. "As far as the intelligence community is concerned, this new witness is absolutely not credible," says one high-ranking German intelligence official. "After questioning him, it's clear to us that nothing he says is believable." Mzoudi, a 31-year-old Moroccan, is only the second person to be tried in

Performance of the week ESA Overshadowed for weeks by the U.S. rover Spirit, Europe's Mars Express — which has been orbiting the Red Planet since Dec. 25 — finally got its day in the sun. As well as relaying stunning close-ups of Mars, the orbiter detected ice at its south pole and identified water vapor in its atmosphere. The findings reinforce the idea that Mars may have supported life.

connection with Sept. 11. Before Zakeri's testimony, he seemed set for acquittal because the Federal Criminal Police said it received information — believed to have come from the interrogation of captured al Qaeda leader Ramzi Binalshibh, who is in U.S. custody — indicating that the Hamburg cell had only four members: the three hijackers and Binalshibh.

If Mzoudi is found innocent, "the court will find a lot of support in the [German] legal community," says Georg Prasser, vice president of the German Bar Association. "Such a decision would prove that there are certain basic rights that still exist in our society." By Charles P. Wallace and William Boston

Experts Under Scrutiny
u.k. The government announced a review of 258 cases in which parents were convicted of killing their babies and an estimated 5,000 instances of children removed from their parents' care by family courts, because of concerns over the reliability of expert evidence. Last year, two women jailed for life for murdering their children, both of whom claimed their babies suffered from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, had their convictions overturned. A third woman was also acquitted of murdering her children. All three cases involved evidence from one cot-death expert, and prompted the Court of Appeal to rule that a parent should not be prosecuted for the death of an infant unless all the experts involved ruled out natural causes.

Demanding Democracy
iran Hard-line clerics reinstated more than 300 of the thousands of candidates they had disqualified from February's parliamentary elections, in response to a request by Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei for them to reconsider their ban. However, more than 70 senior civil servants threatened to resign if all the disqualifications were not overturned; many members of the Cabinet and six vice presidents had already tendered their resignations, but President Mohammed Khatami refused to accept them.

Unity Moves
turkey The powerful National Security Council called for new negotiations to reunite Cyprus ' Greek-speaking south and Turkish-speaking north, based on the plan devised by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Turkey 's hopes of joining the E.U. will be boosted if a solution is found to the 30-year problem. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Annan at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Going Home
middle east Israel and Lebanon 's militant group Hizballah announced a prisoner-swap agreement. Under the German-mediated deal, Israel will initially exchange about 30 Arab prisoners for the return of a businessman and three soldiers presumed dead. At a later stage, the Israelis will release up to 400 Palestinian detainees and hand back the bodies of 59 Lebanese guerrillas.

meanwhile in the u.k. ...
A Fall in Readership?
British hiking magazine, Trail, apologized to its readers for publishing a route that would have led walkers off the edge of a 300-m cliff. Editor Guy Proctor said the mistake was a production error, but he was confident that none of his readers would come to any harm, because they all carry accurate maps anyway.