Witness Details Moussaoui’s Ambitions

An admitted terrorist financier from Malaysia testified in a video played Wednesday that Zacarias Moussaoui dreamed of flying a plane into the White House and that he also discussed ammonium nitrate and powder, bank robberies and brazen kidnappings in the Southeast Asian nation.

Faiz Abu Bakar Bafana described Moussaoui as an eager but unstable young man. Sent to Malaysia by Al Qaeda chieftains, Moussaoui was interested in ongoing terrorist plots to bomb U.S. military installations and a synagogue there, Bafana said.

“He talked about jihad,” Bafana said, recalling a conversation with Moussaoui at Bafana’s apartment in Kuala Lumpur.

“He said it was more important we bring down America,” Bafana said. “He wanted to finance the jihad, that we should just rob a bank or look at kidnapping to get money.

“ ‘If you do that,’ ” he said Moussaoui told him, “ ‘it will give us power.’ ”

Bafana’s testimony at Moussaoui’s sentencing trial puts the French citizen of Moroccan descent in Malaysia about the same time as some of the Sept. 11 hijackers, who met there in January 2000. And though there was no evidence to directly link him with them, Bafana’s recollections suggest that Moussaoui was moving along the same path to strike the United States.

The jurors, who will decide whether Moussaoui will be sentenced to death or to life in prison, heard Bafana’s testimony via a videotape of a deposition taken in November 2002 in Singapore. Bafana had been arrested for violating internal security laws in Singapore, where he can be held without trial for up to 20 years.

Prosecutors and a defense lawyer traveled to Singapore for the deposition, and U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema presided via a video link to her Alexandria courtroom and allowed Moussaoui to also question the witness.

For six hours the jury watched the videotape on monitors placed around the courtroom. The sound often was splintered, and Bafana’s English very difficult to understand. But his message rang out: Moussaoui did not like America.

Bafana, a former construction company owner, turned to radical Islam and became the treasurer for Jemaah Islamiyah, an Al Qaeda affiliate group that mushroomed in Southeast Asia. He said his activities included raising $3,600 to help pay for bombings in Manila that killed 22 people in December 2000.

He also traveled to Afghanistan for weapons training and collected maps of U.S. military bases and videotapes, including one showing the bus routes that carried U.S. military personnel around Singapore.

At one point, Bafana testified, Jemaah Islamiyah asked him to provide a bed for a visitor, whom he identified in court as Moussaoui but said he knew then only as “John.” He said he put Moussaoui up at his apartment, where they discussed jihad against America. He said Moussaoui chastised him for some books he saw in the dining room. “ ‘Some of these books are not good for children,’ ” Bafana recalled Moussaoui as saying. “ ‘The books showing the evolution of man from monkeys.’ ”

Moussaoui then said that he needed to tell Bafana something more but that “it wasn’t safe to say it in the house,” Bafana recalled. They walked to a nearby playground, where Moussaoui handed him a list.

“He told me, ‘Where I can get some ammonium nitrate and powder?’ ” Bafana said. “I said I would try to inquire.”

When they returned to the apartment, Bafana said, “he told me he had a dream he was flying an airplane into the White House. He said he also dreamed he stayed with his brothers in a golden house.”

Bafana recalled that Moussaoui said he told “the sheik” -- Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden -- about his dream and “the sheik said, ‘Go ahead.’ ”

The next day, Moussaoui was eager to begin flying lessons in Kuala Lumpur. Bafana said that he drove him to a “flying club” near the Malaysian Air Force base but that Moussaoui came away disheartened, telling Bafana: “It’s expensive.”

Bafana said the two men would subsequently meet on occasion at a cyber-cafe in Kuala Lumpur. “He said he would manage to get some brothers to assist him in the U.S., and that it would be cheaper in the United States,” Bafana said.

When it was Moussaoui’s turn to ask questions, he suggested that Bafana was cooperating with U.S. authorities to reduce his sentence in Singapore.

“Have you been led to believe that your cooperation will give you a favorable treatment?” Moussaoui asked him.

“No,” Bafana replied.

“So you are cooperating out of your free will because you like to help the United States?”

“No.”

“Then why are you cooperating with the United States?”

“I was told by Singapore to give full cooperation on this investigation,” Bafana replied. “And I believe the killing of innocent civilians is opposed to Islam. That’s why I’m giving my cooperation, to stop this killing.”

Testifying in person Wednesday were two former students and the admissions director of the Airman Flight School in Norman, Okla., where Moussaoui turned up in February 2001. He was flush with cash, they said, but erratic in his studies and unable to master piloting skills. Most students were ready to fly solo after 15 hours of training, but Moussaoui was grounded after 57 hours and never flew alone.

Former student Chris Turner said Moussaoui bragged about having a Learjet job waiting for him in Chicago. Pablo Hernandez Jr., also a former student, said Moussaoui boasted that he worked for “a rich family in England and wanted to learn to fly a big plane because they just bought one.”

Moussaoui was arrested on a visa infraction at a flight school in Minnesota a few weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks.

The admissions director of the Oklahoma school, Brenda Keene, said FBI agents came to her office Aug. 23, 2001, and took copies of records.

But, she added, “they didn’t really care or ask about his flying skills.”