though this was not the subject of a formal decision.113 All four men were convicted in March 2010 to prison sentences ranging from five to twelve years. Federal Prosecutor Rainer Griesbaum told the German Legal Association’s annual meeting in September 2008 that “information provided by foreign intelligence services are nowadays very common, if not prevailing” in terrorism investigations, and Germany must react to “new, complex requirements” if it does not want to “isolate itself internationally.”114 In his view, any information, even if tainted by torture, can be used by the police for investigative purposes. In response to a parliamentary query, the German federal government clarified its position in December 2008: [I]t is ultimately a question of proportionality to what extent such evidence could justify interventional investigative acts...[R]elevant factors are the weight of the infringement of judiciary proceedings on the one hand and the severity of the unsolved crime, especially...an imminent attack, on the other hand.115 Burden of proof A permissive approach to the use of foreign intelligence in judicial proceedings is all the more troubling in light of German jurisprudence on the burden of proof in relation to excluding torture evidence at trial. While German authorities stress their attachment to the absolute prohibition on the use of torture evidence in legal proceedings, the interpretation by German courts of Article 15 of the Convention against Torture places an undue burden on the individual against whom the evidence is invoked to demonstrate that the statements were in fact obtained under torture. The leading case in this regard is the trial of Mounir el Motassadeq for complicity in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. The Higher Regional Court in Hamburg allowed as evidence the summaries of interrogations of three men—Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Mohamed Ould Slahi—in US custody, even though the United States refused to disclose the whereabouts of the detainees or anything about the circumstances under which the interrogations were conducted. The United States 113 Email correspondence with Ricarda Lang, December 4, 2009. On file with Human Rights Watch. 114 Scheuermann and Stark, “Unter Freunden,” Der Spiegel, April 6, 2009. 115 Federal government answer to the question from representatives Ulla Jelpke, Wolfgang Neskovic and the DIE LINKE bloc (Antwort der Bundesregierung auf die Kleine Anfrage der Abgeordneten Ulla Jelpke, Wolfgang Neskovic under der Fraktion DIE LINKE), German Bundestag, December 10, 2008. On file with Human Rights Watch. 41 Human Rights Watch | June 2010