During a tense, 50-minute hearing in federal court here Friday, al-Qaeda member Zacarias Moussaoui admitted that he was part of a broad, radical Islamist conspiracy to fly planes into U.S. buildings.
But Moussaoui, 36, who faces a possible death sentence, insisted that he was not part of the 9/11 hijacking plotand dared prosecutors to show him where, in the confession he signed, it says that he was part of the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil. "Everybody knows that I am not 9/11 material," Moussaoui said in French-accented English. "That's not my conspiracy."
Instead, Moussaoui, defiant as ever in his first public court appearance in several months, said, "I am guilty of a broad conspiracy to use planes as weapons of mass destruction to strike the White House" as part of another plot, planned for another day during a second wave of attacks after 9/11. "My conspiracy," Moussaoui said in deliberate, loud voice, called for him to hijack a 747 jet and fly it into the White House if the U.S. government refused to free Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman.
Rahman, who is known as "the Blind Sheikh," is an Egyptian cleric who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for crimes related to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 plots against New York landmarks.
Asked by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema whether anyone had promised that he would receive a lighter sentence in exchange for his guilty pleas, Moussaoui said, "Not at all. I can't expect leniency from the Americans."
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty said they did not dispute Moussaoui's account. "In a chilling admission of guilt, Moussaoui confessed to his participation," Gonzales said. "Moussaoui and his co-conspirators were responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocents each one a son or daughter, father or mother, husband or wife."
Moussaoui's guilty pleas to all six conspiracy chargesmade over the objections of his court-appointed defense attorneysdoes not end the case that Bush administration officials had hailed as the only prosecution in the United States for the 9/11 conspiracy.
In the coming months, a jury likely will be selected to decide whether Moussaoui should be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison. The so-called "death phase" will be a mini-trial, where prosecutors will call survivors and relatives of the victims of the 9/11 attacks to testify.
Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, vowed "to fight every inch against the death penalty," by arguing to the jury that he played no role, not even a "minor" one, in the 9/11 plot. Earlier this week, when he met with Brinkema in a secret hearing, he said he had told her that he wanted to bypass the death trial and be sentenced immediately. But he said Friday that he had changed his mind. "I will not apply for death," he said.
For the past two years, Moussaoui's case has been bogged down in a legal battle that pitted national security against a defendant's right to a fair trial. Moussaoui had sought access to three captured al-Qaeda operatives whom he said could exonerate him of the 9/11 plot. When then-Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to provide the access, citing national security reasons, Brinkema ruled that prosecutors could not seek the death penalty.
But the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond reinstated the death penalty and ordered Brinkema to craft summaries of what the three witnesses would say about Moussaoui's role, if any, in the 9/11 attacks to present to a jury.
Moussaoui has been in U.S. custody since August 2001, when he raised suspicions of a Minnesota flight school instructor by insisting on learning only how to take off and land commercial jets and by expressing unusual interest in the operations of doors on the planes. His visa expired, Moussaoui was taken into custody by the then Immigration and Naturalization Service, while FBI agents in Minneapolis tried unsuccessfully to convince their supervisors in Washington that the flight student with radical Islamist views might be part of a terrorist plot. To the independent commission that was created to investigate the 9/11 attacks, Moussaoui was "an al-Qaeda mistake" and "a missed opportunity" for the FBI to unravel and prevent the deadly plot.
But to Brinkema, Moussaoui has been an eageralthough difficult at timesstudent of American law. Describing him as "extremely intelligent," the judge said, "He has a better understanding of the legal system than some lawyers who have appeared in this court."
In hundreds of hand-written motions, Moussaoui was vicious in his criticism of Brinkema, prosecutors and especially his own defense attorneys, whom he accused Friday of "ineffective assistance of counsel." When he entered Brinkema's courtroom Friday, Moussaoui stared at spectators as he walked slowly to the defense table in the heavily guarded, packed courtroom. A half-dozen relatives of 9/11 victims stared back. He took nearly five minutes to re-read and sign a five-page, 23-paragraph "statement of facts" prepared by the government that he said he had already read "10 times." And when he exited the courtroom, Moussaoui shouted, "God curse America."
Moussaoui also gave the 9/11 plot's mastermind, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a difficult time, according to the 9/11 Commission's report. After Mohammed sent Moussaoui to Malaysia for flight training, Moussaoui balked at the schools there, saying he was unable to find one he liked, the report said. Instead, the commission said, Moussaoui worked on other terrorist schemes, such as buying four tons of ammonium nitrate for bombs that he wanted to plant on cargo planes bound for the United States. When Mohammed found out, he recalled Moussaoui to Pakistan and told him to go to the United States for flight training, according to the report.
Mohammed has denied during interrogations that he ever considered Moussaoui for the 9/11 plot, the report said. Instead, he claimed that Moussaoui was supposed to have participated in a "second wave" of attacks that faltered because Mohammed was too busy with the 9/11 plot and because two other operatives slated to participate with Moussaoui had backed out. But Mohammed may have felt he had no choice but to consider including Moussaoui "as another possible pilot" in the 9/11 plot, the 9/11 Commission said.
Two hijacker-pilotsMohamed Atta and Ziad Jarrah weren't getting along in the months before 9/11. Jarrah had a girlfriend in Germany and had refused to cease contact with her or his family, angering Atta, the lead hijacker. And, the report said, Moussaoui had special status, having been hand-picked by Osama Bin Laden himself. But Mohammed was not enamored of Moussaoui, whom he called "Sally" in coded messages to another al-Qaeda operative, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, a Yemeni cleric who tried but failed four times to get into the United States to participate in the 9/11 plot, the report said.
As a result of his uneasiness about Moussaoui, Mohammed kept the fiery operative apart from the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers, and the 9/11 Commission said there is no evidence of any contact between Moussaoui and Atta. Ultimately, Jarrah and Atta resolved their differences and Moussaoui was not needed on 9/11. Jarrah was the pilot of United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers revolted against the hijackers. Atta was the pilot on American Flight 11, the first plane to strike the World Trade Center in New York. Bin al-Shibh told U.S. interrogators that Mohammed did not learn of Moussaoui's August 2001 arrest until after 9/11. Had Mohammed and Bin Laden known of the arrest, Bin al-Shibh said, they might have cancelled the operation. |
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