Washington – Zacarias Moussaoui and nearly 500 potential jurors are set to gather in a northern Virginia courtroom today, marking the start of the only trial in the United States of a person charged with direct involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Moussaoui, a 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent, has already pleaded guilty to six counts of conspiracy in connection with the 2001 attacks in New York and Washington. As a result, the trial will be solely over whether he is put to death by injection or spends the remainder of his life in prison.
That Moussaoui is an adherent of al-Qaeda, despises the United States and would be thrilled to fly an airplane into a building filled with American civilians is beyond dispute. He has proclaimed those views loudly in several court appearances. But he has also said that he was not part of the Sept. 11 plot and does not deserve or want to be executed.
Moussaoui and his court-appointed attorneys, with whom he apparently does not communicate, have offered different principal defenses as to why he should not be executed. In motions before the court, the defense attorneys have indicated they will seek to present testimony from medical professionals that Moussaoui is mentally unstable.
Moussaoui has had several seemingly irrational outbursts in previous hearings. The judge has, however, ruled him competent to stand trial and to enter his plea.
Moussaoui has asserted that he had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks. He was in jail at the time, having been arrested weeks before on suspicion of immigration violations when he was a student pilot in Minnesota. When he asserted that he was eager to be a suicide bomber, he said he was meant to be a part of a second wave of attacks by airplanes on public buildings.
In making the case that Moussaoui deserves the death penalty, prosecutors said that it is indisputable that Moussaoui knew of the plans for the Sept. 11 attacks and concealed that knowledge from investigators after his arrest in Minnesota.
A principal part of the strategy of the defense attorneys is to challenge the government’s claim that Moussaoui’s silence contributed in any way to the deaths of those on Sept. 11 because, they suggest, the government knew more than he did at the time of his arrest about al-Qaeda’s plans.