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[ThatHawaiiGuy]

Al-Qa'eda terrorist changes plea
By David Rennie in Alexandria
(Filed: 26/07/2002)

[This is beyond interesting...]


Zacarias Moussaoui, the self-confessed al-Qa'eda terrorist accused of being the 20th September 11 hijacker, yesterday changed his plea from guilty to not guilty after an extraordinary debate with the judge.

Moussaoui, a French citizen and former resident of Brixton, London, explained that his only purpose all along had been to avoid a death sentence in accordance with the Islamic injunction against embracing death.

In a 90-minute hearing at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, that resembled more a legal class in basic law than a trial, Moussaoui, who is representing himself, argued with the grandmotherly figure of Judge Leonie Brinkema that he should be allowed to address a jury of 12 Americans and seek their mercy.

Moussaoui, 34, speaking with a strong French accent and wearing a green jumpsuit with the word "prisoner" in white on his back, made clear his continued contempt for America, the judge, the US government and his own court-appointed lawyers, who he insisted were part of a plot to declare him insane and execute him after a show trial.

Moussaoui initially appeared willing to accept the government's case that he was an al-Qa'eda member. He said he wanted to leapfrog the main phase of the trial and move to the sentencing, when he plans to address the jury on his main obsession: that September 11 was known about by the United States but was allowed to happen in a murderous conspiracy designed to discredit the Islamic world.

Describing Americans as his enemy, Moussaoui said: "Sometimes you can find an honest enemy. Perhaps your normal people will be more honest than this court."

In the absence of any lawyers, Judge Brinkema and Moussaoui sparred, at times like a professor with a brilliant but exasperating pupil. He had earlier declared that his court-appointed lawyers were plotting to kill him.

Yesterday's hearing followed an attempt by Moussaoui a week ago to plead guilty. Then, Judge Brinkema gave him a week to reconsider.

However, the turning point came an hour into yesterday's hearing when the diminutive judge finally managed to interrupt the defendant and engage him directly on what he was agreeing to.

Moussaoui at first pleaded guilty to four of the six charges against him, including conspiracy to commit terrorism, to commit air piracy and to turn a civil airline into a weapon of mass destruction, all of which carry the death penalty.

However, when the judge took Moussaoui through the charges point by point, it became clear that he did not admit to being a September 11 hijacker. Instead, he said he had run a guesthouse for al-Qa'eda, had provided training and served food to one of the hijackers in Kandahar, Afghanistan. "But that does not put me on the plane," he said.

Judge Brinkema made it clear at that point that she was not minded to accept his guilty plea. Suddenly a crestfallen Moussaoui asked for a 15-minute recess. When he returned, he revealed that his only motive was to avoid willingly seeking death.

"Dictated by my obligation to my creator, to Allah, to save my life I withdraw my guilty plea," he said, explaining that his whole purpose in pleading guilty had been to "put forward to the American people, my role, what I did".

In another dramatic change of direction, he announced he would be willing to send written instruction to his reviled stand-by counsel, solely in order to summon witnesses key to his tale of a global government conspiracy.

He named in court Atif Ahmed, "who is a British agent who has taken a very important part of this", whom he wished to summon. "My aim in pleading guilty was to expose the information I have."

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/07/26/wmous26.xml