The only man charged with conspiring with the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is mentally competent to represent himself at his trial, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
While Zacarias Moussaoui won the right to serve as his own defense attorney, he also used the federal court hearing in Alexandria, Va., to assert his innocence. He promised those packed in the courtroom that he had secret information showing he had no contact with the 19 Al Qaeda terrorists who used planes as missiles to attack the United States last year.
Meanwhile, new information emerged in South Florida about a convicted gunrunner who founded the mosque regularly attended by Jose Padilla, a former Chicago street gang member who is the government’s latest Al Qaeda suspect.
Bush administration officials and congressional sources said Thursday that the Justice Department told lawmakers Padilla will not be brought before a military tribunal.
Making its case in a closed meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the department said Padilla can be detained until President Bush decides the war against terrorism is over.
In the Virginia courtroom, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said she will allow Moussaoui to defend himself because of opinions she received from a court-appointed psychiatrist and from those supervising Moussaoui in jail.
However, she repeatedly warned the 34-year-old French citizen that it was “not wise” to serve as his own lawyer in such a complex case. Moussaoui could face the death penalty if convicted.
At the same time, Brinkema dealt a blow to Moussaoui’s defense, telling him he would not have access to classified government documents or sensitive information about the nation’s aviation security system.
Moussaoui is charged with conspiring with the hijackers who commandeered four jetliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in rural Pennsylvania, killing more than 3,000 people on Sept. 11.
“I understand fully the U.S. system of justice,” Moussaoui said under questioning from the judge. “I will never see the light again, I understand this.”
Cites evidence of innocence
Moussaoui answered Brinkema’s questions but repeatedly insisted he had information that would exonerate him. He said U.S. law-enforcement officials were fully aware of his identity from the moment he entered the country because British authorities had raided his London home in 1998. He also said federal officials launched an undercover surveillance operation against him because of the raid in London.
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“For this reason, the government knows I am not linked to the hijackers,” he said. Brinkema cut him off.
In South Florida, where Padilla, the government’s latest terrorism suspect, spent about eight years before allegedly heading overseas and joining Al Qaeda, more details emerged about the radical history of the mosque Padilla attended.
Padilla, known overseas as Abdullah al Muhajir and in South Florida as Ibrahim, is in military custody after being accused of plotting with Al Qaeda to detonate a radiological weapon in the U.S. He was arrested May 8 at O’Hare International Airport. His lawyer says the case against him is weak at best.
Padilla regularly attended Masjid Al-Iman, which was headed during his time there by the Florida representative for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.
Terrorist designation
The Texas-based Muslim charity was designated as a terrorist group by the government last year because of its alleged fundraising for Hamas, a militant Palestinian Islamic group that has claimed responsibility for suicide attacks in Israel.
Before the Holy Land representative, Raed M. Awad, served as the spiritual leader of Masjid Al-Iman, it was headed by Louis A. Haneef, according to state records and interviews with current members.
Haneef was convicted in 1991 and served four years in prison for running weapons to Muslim extremists in Trinidad, according to court records. Those extremists used the roughly 100 guns from Haneef–and about three dozen more from other sources–to launch a failed coup attempt in 1990.
In 1982, Haneef first registered the small mosque as Masjid Muhammad, state records show. In 1989, 18 days after Haneef’s non-profit corporation was dissolved by the state of Florida, the mosque was reincorporated at the same site as Masjid Al-Iman, records show.
One of just two other men listed as officers of Haneef’s non-profit also became the vice president of Masjid Al-Iman, records show.
Meanwhile, Pakistani officials said Padilla had gone to a Central Asian country in search of radioactive components before landing at O’Hare last month, but a U.S. official said investigators had no such information.