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Moussaoui asserts post-9/11 role
From Phil Hirschkorn
(CNN) -- Accused September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui told his trial judge that he had an al Qaeda mission that would have come after the terrorist attacks. "I was not 9/11 material, but a wanna-be post-9/11 terrorist," Moussaoui wrote in an August 11 motion to U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, one of seven recent filings unsealed Tuesday in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Defense attorneys challenging the government's case have said in court papers that Moussaoui intended to participate in a post-September 11 plot outside the United States. Moussaoui, 35, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, maintains he had no role in the September 11 attacks, but he admits he is a member of al Qaeda, the terrorist group that carried them out. Prosecutors have distanced themselves from statements by government officials asserting that Moussaoui would have been the 20th hijacker on September 11, 2001, had he not been jailed on an immigration violation a month before the attacks. Instead, prosecutors say Moussaoui, who attended two flight schools in the United States in 2001, was destined to pilot a fifth hijacked plane into the White House. "If I was to disclose the detail[ed] knowledge of the 20th hijacker real operation, [Attorney General John] Ashcroft will immediately create a new WTC theory," Moussaoui said in the August 11 motion. Brinkema's decision Friday granting Moussaoui, who is representing himself, the right to question reputed September 11 plot leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed remains under seal. (Full story) Sources familiar with the decision said Brinkema granted Moussaoui permission to obtain testimony from Mohammed and an alleged financier of the 19 hijackers, Mustafa al-Hawsawi. Both men were captured in Pakistan six months ago and are detained by the U.S. military at an undisclosed location overseas. "The mastermind of 9/11 is a psychogenius that cannot be substitute[d for] in the World Tyrant Conspiracy trial," Moussaoui wrote in another motion, filed two weeks before Brinkema's decision. In opposing access to al Qaeda captives, the Justice Department has offered the court substitutes for live testimony -- declassified summaries of the information the captives have told their interrogators. Brinkema has agreed with defense arguments that such substitutes were incomplete and misleading when applied to alleged September 11 coordinator Ramzi Binalshibh, who has been in U.S. custody at an undisclosed location overseas for nearly a year. "So we want [Mohammed], not a cheap American substitute," Moussaoui wrote in his motion. Moussaoui wants Mohammed and Binalshibh to testify to clear him of the most serious conspiracy charges, which carry the death penalty. Brinkema has ruled that Moussaoui's right to a fair trial hinges on exercising the constitutional right to call available witnesses of his own choosing. The Bush administration disagrees on national security grounds, saying it has no obligation to make available to a non-citizen an "enemy combatant" held in another country, and that the courts have no right to interfere with executive branch decisions in the conduct of war. "A fair trial," Moussaoui wrote to Brinkema last month, "will be greatly affected" by his own "unique classified information knowledge of why he come to the U.S., what was his mission, who were his contacts for the U.S., who were his co-conspirators." "After all," Moussaoui continued, "you don't even know my rank in al Qaeda." In another filing, Moussaoui told Brinkema he was suspending his steady stream of handwritten motions from his jail cell. "There will be no more pleadings," Moussaoui wrote in an August 15 motion. Instead, he said, Brinkema would have to notify him when he "is required to voice his terrorist opinion." Since then, however, Moussaoui has filed three more motions that remain under seal, according to the court docket. Moussaoui's trial is indefinitely delayed pending the resolution of access to al Qaeda captives.
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