Moussaoui Is Insane, Psychologist Testifies

A clinical psychologist hired by the defense told a federal court jury Tuesday that admitted terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui is a paranoid schizophrenic who began to lose his ability to reason a decade ago, when he first embraced Muslim extremism in England.

The mental health expert from New York testified all day, describing his bizarre jailhouse interview with Moussaoui in which the 37-year-old Frenchman talked to himself and spat water at anyone who came near him.

“He really wasn’t processing reality very well,” Xavier Amador said. “I came to the conclusion that this looked like a delusion of some kind. He had paranoid schizophrenia.”

But under cross-examination, Amador said he could not say for certain which came first -- Moussaoui’s exposure to extremists at the Brixton mosque in London or a family history of schizophrenia that surfaced in Moussaoui.

“Did his illness facilitate his desire to join a hate-filled, paranoid group?” Amador testified. “I don’t know.”

Amador was on the stand for an hour Monday and all of Tuesday. Defense lawyers plan to call another mental health expert today.

Moussaoui pleaded guilty to capital murder last year, and this trial will determine whether he remains in prison for life or is executed. He has testified that he was to pilot a fifth hijacked plane on Sept. 11, 2001.

As the sentencing trial nears its end, the final skirmish is shaping up over the state of Moussaoui’s mental condition.

Moussaoui seemed to recognize this Tuesday. When the jury took a break and filed out of the courtroom, he cried out, “Crazy or not crazy, that is the question!”

Lawyers for both sides told the judge that this last court battle would delay a verdict this week, and Judge Leonie M. Brinkema tentatively scheduled closing arguments for Monday.

Amador, who is an expert on schizophrenia and whose brother suffers from the disease, said he examined Moussaoui for an hour in his jail cell in June 2004.

When he arrived, he said, wet paper towels were strewn around the cell floor because Moussaoui had been spitting water at guards. Moussaoui was sitting facing a wall, Amador said, and talking in English to himself.

He was nodding and muttering, “I have the right to protect myself, praise Allah,” Amador recalled.

Amador, standing outside the cell door, attempted to start a conversation. Moussaoui told him to go away, he said. Fifteen times Moussaoui filled his cupped hands with water, drank and spit at Amador. Finally, he sat down on his bunk.

“He felt depressed and resigned,” Amador said. “He said: ‘You cannot help me. Go away.’ ”

Amador, a refugee from Cuba, added: “He called me an American Jew. He said, ‘My job is to kill you so I can enter paradise.’ ”

Amador said the two eventually talked, and Moussaoui told him at length how he expected President Bush to set him free before he left the White House in January 2009.

“He believes it with 100% absolute conviction,” Amador said.

He said Moussaoui predicted that at some point he would be exchanged for American hostages seized elsewhere.