First 9/11 trial under way
Snipers climbed the roofs and police closed the streets around a suburban courthouse in Virginia today for the start of the first and possibly the only trial of an alleged 9/11 conspirator in America.
Zacarias Moussaoui has admitted being a member of al-Qaeda and training to fly an aircraft into a building in the US in 2001. Over the coming weeks, the US Government will seek to persuade a jury that he was directly involved in American??s worst terrorist atrocity and deserves the death sentence.
Moussaoui, a 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent, denies that he was part of the plot to attack the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11, and maintains that he was training for a ??second wave? of attacks. He was arrested on August 17, 2001, on immigration charges, and was in custody at the time of the attacks.
The arguments in the ??death penalty phase? of Moussaoui??s trial are expected to be a test of America??s law enforcement agencies in the run-up to the attacks.
In a sign of the attention placed on the case, the proceedings will be broadcast to five other federal courtrooms around the country, where relatives and friends of those killed on September 11 will watch as the jury decides Moussaoui??s fate.
Prosecutors will contend that Moussaoui held back vital, potentially life-saving information after his arrest. Gerald Zerkin, Moussaoui??s defence lawyer, is expected to argue however that his client knew nothing of the plot - and that even if he had mentioned it, the FBI was unlikely to have acted on the information.
Six witnesses, all federal agents, have been called by the prosecution, and the first may give evidence this afternoon after opening statements. One of the key characters in the trial is expected to be Harry Samit, the Minneapolis-based FBI agent who first investigated Moussaoui after his arrest in August 2001.
Mr Samit has also been called by the defence and is expected to shed light on the bureaucracy and miscommunications that characterised the intelligence failure of the FBI and the CIA before the attacks.
The trial of Moussaoui, initially dubbed the ??20th hijacker?, has flitted between civilian and military courts since his arrest more than four years ago. The case has been slowed by the weight of classified material needed as evidence.
Moussaoui??s courtroom behaviour has also tangled the process. On the first day of jury selection last month, he berated Judge Leonie Brinkema and tried to fire his court-appointed lawyers, a move blocked by the court because of the seriousness of the punishment he is facing.
Moussaoui has admitted three charges of conspiring to commit Terrorism, destroying aircraft and using weapons of mass destruction. If the jury decide not to execute him, he will spend the rest of his life in an American prison.
The 9/11 Commission compiled a detailed study of Moussaoui??s movements in the months before September 11 but was unable to describe his role in the plot with any certainty. The report noted that he has been described in contrasting fashions by various al-Qaeda detainees.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the attacks, told US investigators that Moussaoui knew nothing of the plot, while Ramzi Binalshibh, another organiser, has admitted wiring large amounts of money to Moussaoui in the months before the attack, to help him prepare as a possible substitute for one of the eventual hijackers, who was considering pulling out of the plot.
Moussaoui was arrested in August 2001 after his instructor at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minnesota, became suspicious of his desire to learn to take-off and land a Boeing 747 with no intention of gaining a pilot??s licence. Moussaoui is reported to have told his instructor it was an ??ego thing?.
After finding $32,000 in Moussaoui??s bank account and evidence of extremist, jihadi beliefs, the FBI in Minneapolis wanted to report Moussaoui as a possible hijacker to the Federal Aviation Administration - but the move was blocked by FBI Headquarters.
The argument over the handling of the Moussaoui case led the upper echelons of the FBI to accuse Minneapolis field office of ??spinning up? their reports, according to the 9/11 Commission, an accusation that led Mr Samit??s supervisor to inform Washington - before the 9/11 atrocity occurred - that he was ??trying to keep someone from taking a plane and crashing into the World Trade Centre?.
Ultimately, details of Moussaoui??s arrest and his recent history - he had spent time in Pakistan and Malaysia, where he met other 9/11 plotters, as well as Paris and London - were put on the desk of George Tenet, the Director of the CIA, on August 23, 2001.
A cable was wired to Paris the following day asking for information about a possible ??suicide hijacker?. The inquiry did not receive a response until after the attacks.
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