There are also a range of allowances, and officials pay a lower rate of tax than most high earners.Most of the new recruits are likely to have English as their second language, changing the linguistic balance in Brussels. Applicants will need some competence in both English and French. Yesterday Neil Kinnock, the European Commission vice-president, set out plans to fill the new posts by setting “indicative targets” for recruitment from each of the new states.These should be achieved over a seven-year period after which Malta, the smallest of the new nations, should have about 83 posts, and Poland 1,341. The European Commission says the recruitment drive will not freeze applications from existing 15 member states because there will be other recruitment areas and natural wastage.Yesterday Mr Kinnock said that nobody would benefit by encouraging a “brain drain” from the applicants. The scale of the response for the temporary jobs suggests a huge number of applications for the permanent posts, and Mr Kinnock said that “our problem will be to ensure that the numbers are such as to be manageable and that we get the right people”.The recruitment drive meant the Commission’s permanent civil service would increase by 13 per cent to almost 24,000 employees by 2011, a spokesman for the Commission said.. Mounir al-Motassadeq may be the first man to be convicted in connection with the 11 September attacks on America, but as prosecutors around the world endure the frustrations of elusive or missing evidence and the reticence of national security agencies with valuable information to offer, there are doubts whether there will ever be a second.

Defence lawyers sought to depict the evidence against him as no more than a web of suppositions based on his unfortunate choice of friends – Mohamed Atta, Ziad Jarrah, Marwan al-Shehhi and other people involved in the attacks.Even the judge, Albrecht Mentz, intimated towards the end of the three-month trial that the court might want to consider lesser charges – although he changed his mind. And there may yet be some kind of reversal on appeal.Prosecutors in Germany, the United States and elsewhere have several problems. The hijackers themselves are dead, some of the other main suspects remain at large, and some of the best evidence – from captured senior al-Qa’ida operatives and plotters – is being guarded for security reasons.Motassadeq was convicted over evidence that he and his lawyers found impossible to explain. The Americans refused to make him available in the Motassadeq case, and are fighting to keep him out of the US case against Zacarias Moussaoui, the Frenchman arrested three weeks before 11 September.There is some debate whether the US line in the Moussaoui case is dictated by security concerns, or whether John Ashcroft, the Attorney General, is afraid Mr Shibh’s testimony might scupper his ambitions to have Mr Moussaoui sentenced to death. Evidence now suggests Mr Moussaoui was never a serious candidate for participation in the attacks because the plotters thought he was too unstable.. A Moroccan student driven by “hatred of America and Israel” was found guilty of aiding the 11 September 2001 suicide hijackers and jailed for a maximum of 15 years by a Hamburg court yesterday in the first conviction of a conspirator involved in the world’s worst terrorist attack.

“They wanted to strike at the foundations of the United States with an attack of hitherto unprecedented dimensions.”Motassadeq, the judge said, had provided logistical support for the group and funded the hijackers from his bank account. He had covered up for the suicide pilots after they had left Hamburg for America to launch the 11 September attacks “He fulfilled this task. He knew about the preparations for the attack and supported the planning,” Mr Mentz said.He was arrested in November 2001 while preparing to return to Morocco, where his wife had just given birth to their second child.Dressed in an open-necked shirt and pullover, he remained stony-faced and motionless as the verdict against him was read out. During the four-month trial he had claimed repeatedly to have known nothing of the plans to attack New York and Washington. He said he had simply befriended fellow Muslim students at Hamburg’s Technical University, where he and the hijackers were studying, and claimed to have always rejected violence and extremism.Defence lawyers, who had called for Motassadeq’s acquittal, said yesterday they would appeal against the verdict, insisting that the evidence did not stand up. His lawyer Hans Leistritz said: “What we have here is suspicions, interpretations of behaviour and interpretations of beliefs.”Hartmut Jacobi, another defence lawyer, complained that the American and German security services had refused to release evidence provided by the suspected al-Qa’ida member Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who is being held in America.Federal prosecutors used evidence from several witnesses and intelligence material to mount their case.

They were convinced that Motassadeq worked as the “accountant” for the Hamburg cell formed by Atta and the two other suicide pilots, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah. Motassadeq was said to have helped to pay for flying lessons taken by the pilots and to have signed Atta’s will.The prosecution’s case relied mainly on Motassadeq’s admission that he had attended an al-Qa’ida military training camp in Afghanistan for three weeks in 2000. He said he was taught to use a Kalashnikov assault rifle and listened to speeches given by Osama bin Laden. Motassadeq insisted that he went there purely for religious reasons, claiming that Islam required him to be trained how to use a weapon.Motassadeq went to Germany in 1993, initially to learn German.