Moussaoui Prosecutors Doubt Part of Claim

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060420/...e_us/moussaoui

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 41 minutes ago

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Prosecutors acknowledged on Thursday the government has no evidence to support — and actually doubts — part of Zacarias Moussaoui's dramatic courtroom confession that he was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks: His claim that shoe bomber Richard Reid was to be on his team.

Thanks to legal maneuvering outside court, the potentially damaging concession reached the jury in a decidedly undramatic way: It was part of a stipulation agreed to by the government and read to the jury in the monotone voice of defense lawyer Alan Yamamoto.

The disclosure came shortly before the defense rested its case for sparing the life of the 37-year-old Frenchman. Testimony in the trial concluded after prosecutors presented their only rebuttal witness, psychiatrist Raymond Patterson, who examined Moussaoui. Patterson disagreed with defense experts who testified the terrorist conspirator is a paranoid schizophrenic.

On Monday, jurors who must choose execution or life in prison for Moussaoui will hear closing arguments and begin deliberations.

The windup of testimony in the 1 1/2-month roller coaster trial covered several issues:

_Seven more people who lost relatives in the attacks testified on Moussaoui's behalf about how they have devoted their lives to reconciliation rather than vengeance. The defense called 13 victim relatives over two days to try to blunt the impact of nearly four dozen victims and relatives whose heart-rending testimony for the prosecution had some jurors wiping their eyes.

_The defense read another government-approved stipulation acknowledging that six al-Qaida operatives who directly planned and put in place the Sept. 11 plot, including mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and planner Ramzi Binalshibh, are in U.S. custody and have not been charged. Some Sept. 11 families have criticized the government for charging only Moussaoui, whom they consider marginal, and not major players such as Shaikh Mohammed.

The concession about Reid went directly to the argument between prosecutors and defense lawyers over Moussaoui's credibility since he testified March 27. He stunned the courtroom that day by recanting his four-year-old claim of having nothing to do with Sept. 11. Instead he said he was to have hijacked a fifth jetliner, with Reid, that day. Previously, Moussaoui claimed his planned attack on the White House was part of a later plot.

Since Moussaoui testified, the court-appointed defense team — with whom he does not cooperate — has portrayed him as a delusional schizophrenic who lied either to achieve martyrdom through execution or to enhance his role in history.

Prosecutors have tried to shore up Moussaoui's reputation. They argue he is not insane but a committed Islamic fundamentalist jihadist who finally confessed his role and determination to kill Americans.

Defense lawyers tried to bring Reid to court from federal prison, where he is serving life for attempting to detonate a shoe bomb on a trans-Atlantic flight in late 2001.

That bid was thwarted in motions still sealed from the public. But defense lawyers were able to obtain the government's agreement on the statement about Reid.

"No information is available to indicate that Richard Reid had pre-knowledge of the Sept. 11 operation or was instructed by al-Qaida leaders to conduct an operation in coordination with Moussaoui," it said.

Reid named Moussaoui as the beneficiary in his will and two FBI analysts concluded that was an unlikely decision for him to make if they were going to be on a joint suicide mission, the statement said.

The two FBI analysts also concluded it was unlikely Reid was part of a Sept. 11 plot with Moussaoui because Reid spent May to September 2001 traveling in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, Turkey and Amsterdam and The Hague in the Netherlands. All Sept. 11 participants were in the U.S. by July 2001, the statement said.

During the government's rebuttal, Patterson testified his examination of Moussauoi found "exaggerations of traits we all have," but "not a major mental illness."

`In jargon: he's a character," Patterson said.

He dismissed items cited by defense doctors, such as an incident in which he spat on a defense doctor more than a dozen times while refusing to submit to an examination. "I describe that with the clinical term `pissed off,'" Patterson said, noting Moussaoui claimed guards manhandled him earlier that day.

Moussaoui's often vituperative and incoherent written court motions and his dream that President Bush will release him were not evidence of the disorganized thinking or delusions of schizophrenia, Patterson said. Rather, he said, they were a part of "fighting his war, using them as propaganda."

The jury earlier found Moussaoui eligible for execution. Although Moussaoui was in jail on Sept. 11, the jury ruled that lies he told federal agents before Sept. 11 kept them from identifying and stopping some of the hijackers.