WORLD / America

Jury poised to get 9\11 death penalty case
(AFP)
Updated: 2006-04-21 09:35

The US government admitted there was no evidence to back Zacarias Moussaoui's dramatic courtroom confession that he was to have been a key player in the September 11 attacks.

The revelation, at the Al-Qaeda plotter's death penalty trial, undercut Moussaoui's claim that he and British shoebomber Richard Reid were to have hit the White House with a fifth hijacked jet in the 2001 attacks.

It came on the final day of evidence in the grueling, emotional trial, before jurors will be handed the task Monday of deciding whether Moussaoui should be put to death over the strikes, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

Prosecutors meanwhile targeted defense claims the Frenchman was a paranoid schizophrenic, suffering from delusions, calling a forensic psychiatrist who denied he was mentally ill.

The defense also dipped into the well of pain left by the 2001 attacks in a bid to blunt harrowing prosecution testimony from other grief-stricken relatives and tapes and pictures of the horror of September 11.

Information of Reid was contained in a stipulation agreed between defense and prosecution, and read out in court by defense lawyer Alan Yamamoto.

"To date, there is no information available to indicate that Richard Reid had pre-knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, or was instructed by the Al-Qaeda leadership to conduct an operation in coordination with Moussaoui," the document said.

The statement said that while the 19 September 11 hijackers were in the United States before the attacks, Reid was traveling between Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Netherlands, Israel and Turkey.

"It is highly unlikely that Reid was part of this operation," the declaration said attributing the comment to two unnamed FBI analysts.

The document also said Reid left his personal effects in a will to Moussaoui, whom he met in Afghanistan, further undermining Moussaoui's claim of a planned joint attack.

Moussaoui's statement, made from the witness stand on March 27, conflicted with all previous knowledge of the September 11 attacks -- and with his own earlier denials that he had no role in the attacks.

It was seen as a key factor in the jury's decision of April 3, that Moussaoui was eligible for the death penalty, over prosecution claims that his "lies" while in jail in August 2001, let the September 11 attacks go forward.

Defense lawyers had asked Judge Leonie Brinkema to summon Reid from a top security jail in the United States to testify. The reasons why he did not appear are still under seal.

Prosecutors called a forensic psychologist to rebut the main defense argument that Moussaoui is a paranoid schizophrenic, and so should be spared to spend the rest of his life in jail.

Raymond Patterson gave the final testimony of the marathon trial, which opened March 6.

"Can you tell us to a reasonable degree of medical certainty as to whether the defendant suffers from schizophrenia?" asked prosecutor David Novak.

"My opinion is that Mr. Moussaoui does not suffer from schizophrenia and has never suffered from schizophrenia," Patterson, said.

He also concluded, unlike clinical psychologists called by the defense, that Moussaoui did not suffer from delusions, deciding instead that Moussaoui may have some non-specified personality disorder.

Under court rules September 11 family members were not permitted to comment on the sentence to be handed Moussaoui, the only man tried in the United States over the 2001 attacks.

But their testimony at the climax of the defense case is a sign that they oppose the government's drive to execute him.

Jennifer Glick of New Jersey, whose brother Jeremy Glick was on flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, was asked by defense lawyers how she would like her brother remembered.

"I would like us to celebrate his life. I would like us to remember that the goodness he showed, we all have inside us," she said.

Adele Welty watched on television as the twin towers were toppled, with her son Timothy, a New York fireman, inside one of them.

"I want him to be remembered as a very lovely man, not just as a statistic, as someone who loved his life. He was someone who had a great reverence for life even the smallest of God's creatures," she said.

The victim testimony came six days after Moussaoui, whom some observers believe is bent on martyrdom, said courtroom displays of grief were "disgusting" and he wished it could be September 11 every day.