ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Despite numerous outbursts by Zacarias Moussaoui proclaiming “I am al-Qaida,” a federal judge pushed forward Monday with the lengthy process of selecting a sentencing jury to determine whether the only man to be tried in the Sept. 11, 2001, conspiracy should live or die.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema started the process by bringing about 500 potential jurors into her courtroom and asking them to fill out lengthy questionnaires on a number of issues, such as attitudes toward Muslims and the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers – and even whether they believe it is safe to fly.
Repeatedly, northern Virginia residents entered the courtroom, and repeatedly the 37-year-old defendant in a green jumpsuit with the word “prisoner” on his back interrupted the proceedings. Each time, the judge ordered Moussaoui removed.
“This trial is a circus,” he proclaimed.
“I want to be heard!” he shouted.
“These people do not represent me,” he said, referring to defense lawyers sitting nearby.
Erratic and difficult to understand, Moussaoui insisted that he will testify on his own behalf when the trial gets under way with the seating of a jury on March 6.
“For four years I have waited. I will tell them the truth I know. I will take the stand,” he said. The trial, however, is a sentencing phase. Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, pleaded guilty last April to six criminal charges that he had a role in the Sept. 11 conspiracy led by Osama bin Laden.
Moussaoui did not deny that he was an al-Qaida operative and a soldier for bin Laden. But he said he was not sent to the U.S. to board one of the four hijacked airplanes, and instead insisted he was being groomed to fly a fifth aircraft into the White House.
He was arrested in August 2001, a month before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and jailed on immigration charges in Minnesota after raising suspicions by attending flight schools there and in Oklahoma.
Federal prosecutors plan to focus the case for Moussaoui’s execution on their contention that if he had cooperated with FBI agents after his arrest and told them about the plot, the government might have been able to prevent the loss of nearly 3,000 lives on Sept. 11.
But defense lawyers hope to persuade the jury that the government missed numerous chances to learn about the impending attacks, citing their decision not to open up Moussaoui’s laptop computer and an earlier FBI memo voicing concern about Middle Eastern immigrants taking flight lessons in Phoenix.
If jurors do not send Moussaoui to the federal execution chamber in Terre Haute, Ind., then he will be dispatched to prison with no parole, most likely at the government’s highly secure “supermax” lockdown in Florence, Colo.
The questionnaires help prosecutors and defense lawyers streamline the selection process when the jury candidates begin returning to the courthouse on Feb. 15 for individual questioning by the judge.
The trial is slated to begin March 6.
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