Moussaoui Details His Hatred of America By MATTHEW BARAKAT Associated Press April 14, 2006 ALEXANDRIA , Va. - Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui insists he does not want to be executed, but for the second time he took the stand at his death-penalty trial and spouted off in a way that could eliminate any chance for mercy. Moussaoui mocked the tearful testimony of 9/11 victims and their families and wished for similar attacks every day until America falls. He gave a detailed explanation of his hatred for America, flipping through a Quran on the witness stand trying to find justification for his views. Moussaoui's testimony Thursday at his death-penalty trial came as defense lawyers sought to show Moussaoui was crazy and prosecutors sought to show he was simply evil. Both sides made their point at various times, but the most visceral testimony came as Moussaoui again reveled in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, just one day after the jury concluded a week of gut-wrenching testimony from 9/11 families and victims. Moussaoui called an Army officer who crawled on his belly to safety beneath searing smoke "pathetic" and ridiculed a Navy officer who wept as she described the loss of two colleagues. "I think it was disgusting for a military person" to cry, Moussaoui said of the testimony of Navy Lt. Nancy McKeown. "She is military, she should expect people at war with her to want to kill her." Asked if he was happy to hear her sobbing, he said, "Make my day." Prosecutor Rob Spencer asked Moussaoui: "So you would be happy to see 9/11 again?" "Every day until we get you," the 37-year-old Frenchman responded with enthusiasm. At other times, Moussaoui espoused beliefs that simply seemed bizarre. He insisted that President Bush would free him from prison some time before his term ends in 2009, perhaps as part of a prisoner exchange. He said it was revealed to him in a dream, just like his plan to fly a plane into the White House. Spencer tried several times to get Moussaoui to say he didn't really think it would happen, but Moussaoui was resolute. "I haven't doubted it for one single second," Moussaoui said. Moussaoui said he didn't think his previous testimony on March 27, in which he said publicly for the first time that he was to have piloted a fifth plane on 9/11, would hurt him with the jury. That testimony put Moussaoui at the center of the 9/11 plot in a way that prosecutors hadn't even hoped to prove at the trial's outset. Moussaoui said Allah will protect him as long as he tells the truth, no matter what the jury thinks of him. Pressed by defense lawyer Gerald Zerkin if he thought he was helping his case, Moussaoui responded: "I was putting my trust in God, so from an Islamic point of view, yes," acknowledging that non-Muslims might view his testimony as harmful. He denied that he is secretly sabotaging his case as a means to achieve martyrdom through execution. "I want to fight," he said. He said that if he were in charge of his own defense he might have played up the notion that he could have been used as part of a prisoner exchange for captured American troops. Moussaoui has taken the stand twice now in his own defense, both times against the advice of his court-appointed lawyers. Defense lawyers say their client is lying about his role in Sept. 11. They point to four years of denials by Moussaoui of involvement in the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, and a lack of supporting evidence for his new claim. They suggest he either seeks martyrdom or an inflated role in history. During his 2 1/2 hours on the stand, Moussaoui offered a lengthy explanation of why he hates Americans. Islam requires Muslims to be the world's superpower, he said as he paged through the Quran. "We have an obligation to be the superpower. You have to be subdued," Moussaoui said. "America is a superpower and you want to eradicate Islam." He also criticized U.S. support for Israel, which he called "the Jewish state of Palestine." "Every child who has been killed in Palestine has been killed because of you," he said. Israel is "just a missing star in the American flag," he added. Moussaoui's second act didn't quite captivate the jury in the same way as his first appearance. Jurors did not feel compelled to keep their eyes on him through the duration of his testimony, as they did last month. The trial resumes Monday. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema told jurors they will likely begin deliberations early next week. Moussaoui has already pleaded guilty and a jury has already found him eligible for the death penalty. The jury must now decide whether he should be put to death or be sentenced to life in prison.

Flashback: Moussaoui's mother claims he was drugged AFP March 7, 2006 ALEXANDRIA, Virginia - The mother of Zacarias Moussaoui saw him in court Tuesday for the first time in years and claimed that he had been drugged. Aicha el-Wafi traveled from France to attend her son's death penalty hearing, where prosecutors are arguing that Moussaoui, a confessed Al-Qaeda conspirator, should be put to death for his role in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. "That is not Zacary," said Aicha el-Wafi, 59, speaking in French during a break in her son's sentencing trial on Tuesday. "He is too calm. He doesn't even budge." "It's another Zac," continued his mother, visibly upset. "I believe, in this moment, he has been drugged, in order for him to be calm and not disturb anybody." The French-born Moussaoui, who has confessed his role as an Al-Qaeda conspirator, faces death or life in prison without the possibility of parole. Aicha el-Wafi has not seen her youngest son since July 2002. On Tuesday Moussaoui entered the courtroom and glanced at the public, ignoring his mother. He never looked towards her during the proceedings.

Flashback: Moussaoui Offered to Implicate Himself By Jerry Markon and Timothy Dwyer Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, March 29, 2006; A01 Zacarias Moussaoui wanted to be a witness for the prosecution -- and against himself. On the eve of his death penalty trial last month, Moussaoui met with prosecutors and offered to testify for them in exchange for better jail conditions before he was put to death, jurors were told late yesterday. The al-Qaeda operative withdrew the offer when he realized he had the right to testify on his own behalf and when prosecutors insisted that he also tell them about other terrorist plots. "Have you ever heard of a defendant in a capital case offering to testify against himself?" defense attorney Edward B. MacMahon Jr. asked an FBI agent who took the stand after the news was revealed to the jury. "No, not in my experience," said agent James M. Fitzgerald. It was the latest bizarre turn in a trial that is expected to go to the jury today. Before defense attorneys rested their case that Moussaoui is not eligible for the death penalty, jurors heard testimony that one of Moussaoui's terrorist bosses thought he was "not right in the head" -- and that several disputed Moussaoui's testimony that he was supposed to crash a hijacked airplane into the White House on Sept. 11, 2001. In an effort to save Moussaoui's life, his attorneys ended their case by trying to discredit their client. They told jurors that Moussaoui had said the opposite when he pleaded guilty last year to conspiring with al-Qaeda, insisting then that he was "not 9/11 material." Prosecutors responded by coming to the defense of Moussaoui, whom they have been trying to execute over his role in the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history. They introduced evidence of the meeting Moussaoui requested four days before jury selection began in the trial. Moussaoui, whose attorneys have vehemently objected to allowing him to take the stand, said he would testify for prosecutors about his plan to fly a fifth hijacked plane into the White House. In exchange for incriminating himself, he did not ask that his life be spared. "He wanted better jail time between the time he was given a death sentence and the time he was executed," Fitzgerald told jurors. He said the meeting, described as civil, ended when prosecutors told Moussaoui he had an "absolute" constitutional right to testify. It was unclear how jurors, some of whom were taking notes as they left the courtroom, would view the development. Prosecutors hope it reinforces that Moussaoui was telling the truth when he testified about his role because he would have told prosecutors the same thing. Moussaoui's defense appeared to be trying to signal to jurors that Moussaoui is untrustworthy and cannot be believed. Moussaoui testified Monday that he was supposed to hijack a fifth plane Sept. 11 and attack the White House with a crew that included Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber." He also admitted to a key part of the government's case: that he had lied to the FBI when arrested in August 2001 to allow the Sept. 11 plot to go forward. Even the judge indicated that Moussaoui's testimony may resonate with the jury. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, who threw out the death penalty in the case in 2003 before being overruled, declined a defense motion yesterday to toss it again. "This case changed dramatically with Mr. Moussaoui's testimony," Brinkema said out of the presence of jurors. Defense attorneys spent much of yesterday trying to overcome the damage Moussaoui had done to his case with his testimony. Even if Moussaoui was telling the truth about his role, his admissions did not address a fundamental part of the government's case -- that Sept. 11 could have been thwarted if Moussaoui had told the truth. Defense lawyers tried to hammer that point home -- that the government had plenty of warnings but could not stop it -- to the jury yesterday before resting their case. Closing arguments are scheduled for this afternoon. If jurors find Moussaoui eligible for death, a second phase of the trial will determine whether he will be executed. Moussaoui, 37, pleaded guilty last year and is the only person convicted in the United States on charges stemming from Sept. 11. In trying to overcome the image of Moussaoui calmly telling jurors Monday how he wants every American to die and rejoiced about the Sept. 11 attacks, defense attorneys returned to one of their core arguments. They introduced more evidence showing that the government could not stop the attacks, despite all the warnings, because of a pre-Sept. 11 mind-set. The defense argues that Moussaoui's information about the plot would not have helped. Moussaoui's defense read into the record portions of the July 2001 "Phoenix memo," written by an FBI agent in Arizona, warning of suspicious individuals taking flight training in the United States, as the Sept. 11 hijackers did. The memo was not shared with the CIA or aviation and immigration authorities, and it generated little interest among top FBI officials. The defense also showed the jury videotaped portions of then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks. At one point, Rice was asked by a commissioner whether Moussaoui's information could have helped stop the attacks, as prosecutors have argued at the trial. "I do not believe it is a good analysis to go back and presume that somehow we would have gotten lucky by going back and shaking the trees," Rice said. Prosecutors have argued that if Moussaoui had told the FBI about al-Qaeda's plans, the FBI would have scrambled and alerted federal aviation officials, who would have boosted security at the nation's airports. The captured al-Qaeda members whose testimony was read to the jury did not speak highly of Moussaoui. Nurjaman Riduan Isamuddin, who is known as Hambali and was the chief strategist for a South Asian terror group with ties to al-Qaeda, said he worked with Moussaoui in Malaysia in 2000 and believed he was "very troubled, not right in the head." Hambali, who was captured in 2003, told interrogators that Moussaoui "managed to annoy everyone he came in contact with." That drew a smile from Moussaoui, who otherwise did not visibly react to the testimony. Mustafa al-Hawsawi, the financial and travel planner for Osama bin Laden's organization, said he saw Moussaoui at al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan but never helped him with flight arrangements to the United States -- as he did for the other hijackers who brought down the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon and crashed a plane into a field in Pennsylvania. The statements, which were read to the jury by defense attorneys, climaxed a court battle that delayed the case for more than two years. Brinkema granted Moussaoui's lawyers access to a number of al-Qaeda detainees they said could help his defense. The government refused to produce them, for national security reasons, and a federal appeals court eventually said the detainees would not testify. Instead, the court said, the statements they gave to interrogators would be read to the jury.

Flashback: Moussaoui's mom lashes out at US, al-Qaeda PARIS, April 6, 2006 (AFP) The mother of Zacarias Moussaoui, facing a possible death sentence for the September 11 attacks in the United States, lashed out at both the US government and the al-Qaeda terror network for putting her son's life at stake. "It is the American government which is responsible for the good and the bad in the world, and they (the Americans) have found the ideal person to blame," said Aicha el-Wafi in a telephone interview with the Paris bureau of AFP. "My son is going to be condemned to death for things he did not do and he is going to die because he is an Arab," she said. Moussaoui, a French national of Moroccan origin, has confessed to being an al-Qaeda conspirator, but he has maintained he was due to fly a jetliner into the White House in follow-up attacks and not in the September 11 strikes. For his mother, Osama bin Laden's terror network is also at fault for abandoning Moussaoui in the wake of the 2001 attacks. "I would like to know what has happened to all those al-Qaeda chiefs, they must out there somewhere, laughing, while my son is going to die." She says he is "fed up with this circus, and he is paying for the Islamists and the Americans. He is not responsible for the September 11 attacks." On Monday, the jury at a court in Alexandria, Virginia, ruled that Moussaoui was eligible for the death penalty. They are now being asked to weigh mitigating or aggravating factors before deciding whether to impose capital punishment. Until last month in the suburban Washington courtroom, el-Wafi had not seen her youngest son since July 2002. When asked about her son's sometimes aggressive behavior - even suicidal - and outbursts during court appearances, she said he "wanted to end his life." "My son told me (on the telephone)'I know that they want my head so I give it to them'," she said. Her 37-year-old son has his reasons for being aggressive. "Each time that he asked to see parts of his dossier, the Americans told him that it was a 'state secret'. It is easy to say that but it is a state lie." She still does not know if she will return to the United States to attend the death penalty phase of his trial. "I know that the worst is going to happen," she said, convinced that her son will face execution. Moussaoui who suffers from arthritis wears "an electric belt around his waist" and has swelled up. "They say he is drugged," el-Wafi said. Moussaoui, a self-proclaimed "slave of Allah," had a rough childhood in southwestern France before hearing the call to jihad for the first time at mosques in London, where he studied international business. He was arrested in August 2001, weeks before the world's deadliest terror attack, which killed nearly 3,000 people. But prosecutors contend he knew in advance of the strike and did not mention it to FBI investigators, so he is as guilty as the September 11 hijackers who steered airliners into landmark buildings in New York and Washington. His court-appointed lawyers, trying to save him from death by lethal injection, have described him as a bit of a buffoon, quoting one terror suspect who branded Moussaoui "cuckoo in the head", claiming he was kicked off the team by "real terrorists" who found him a "headache". According to his mother, Moussasaoui has been locked up in a "two meters by three" cell where "he doesn't know if it is day or night," his mother said. He does not have a television or radio, and the only way he gets news is "from his guards who pass him messages" about what "is happening outside" the prison, she said. "I would like to see him and speak to him calmly, like a mother to a son, away from journalists, from everyone," she said. The mother also had harsh words for the French authorities who "have done nothing to help my son" and who, once "he is condemned to death," will only then rise up "to say they are against capital punishment." "My son is an Islamist, I do not deny that, but is that a reason to kill him?" she asked.