9/11 Suspect Is Expected to Plead Guilty

Zacarias Moussaoui intends to plead guilty to all federal charges against him in the Sept. 11 plot, government officials said Wednesday, which would make him the first person convicted in the U.S. for the terrorist attacks and leave him eligible for the death penalty.

Government officials and other sources cautioned that the 36-year-old Moussaoui had tried to plead guilty before, only to change his mind. And they warned that he often was incoherent, irrational and unable to understand what was in his best interest.

Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, was in jail at the time of the attacks and has remained in custody. The case against him remains unclear because government prosecutors have not revealed the extent of their evidence.

He is scheduled to appear Friday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., where Judge Leonie M. Brinkema has said she will accept a guilty plea. His case would move to a penalty phase that could last several weeks.

Moussaoui was arrested in August 2001 after a Minnesota flight instructor became alarmed about his behavior because he seemed in a hurry to learn how to fly airplanes. The teacher notified the FBI, and Moussaoui was taken into custody on immigration charges.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, he was indicted on conspiracy and other charges in the plot.

Government sources believed Moussaoui was to have been the 20th hijacker. But they since have determined that Al Qaeda leaders decided Moussaoui was unreliable and tried to recruit someone to take the fifth slot on the plane carrying four terrorists that crashed into a Pennsylvania field.

The three other planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon each had five terrorists on board.

One of the key charges in the indictment alleges that Moussaoui accepted a $14,000 wire transfer from the plot organizers to cover his pilot training in Minnesota.

The judge has imposed a gag order, so prosecutors and defense lawyers cannot speak about the case.

But government officials confirmed Wednesday that Moussaoui had notified the court that he planned to take responsibility for all the charges filed against him -- four of which carry the death penalty. The charges include conspiring to commit acts of terrorism, murder and aircraft piracy.

“We expect him to plead straight up to all six charges in the indictment,” one government official said Wednesday. The official added that “this isn’t the result of a plea bargain or a plea deal” -- meaning that the government was not waiving the death penalty in return for his guilty plea.

“We have not bargained that away,” the official said.

Sources said in Friday’s hearing the judge would engage Moussaoui in a legal colloquy and ask him whether he admitted to certain facts in the indictment.

She also could allow him to make a separate statement to the court, but the likelihood of that remained unclear given Moussaoui’s penchant to disrupt proceedings with rantings.

In July 2002, at a routine pretrial hearing, Moussaoui told the judge that he belonged to Al Qaeda, was pledged to Osama bin Laden and that it was his intent to, “with full knowledge, enter a plea of guilty.”

Given a week to reconsider, Moussaoui came back into court and said: “Because of my obligation to my creator, Allah, and to save and defend my life, I withdraw my guilty plea.” At that time, Moussaoui said he was intended to participate in another plot besides Sept. 11.

Assuming Moussaoui enters a guilty plea Friday and the judge accepts it, the next step would be a special punishment trial.

A jury would hear arguments, testimony and evidence before deciding whether to put him to death.

A guilty plea would allow the government to avoid a trial, during which prosecutors might have had to disclose information about Sept. 11 plotters that they would prefer to keep secret.

But a team of lawyers appointed by Brinkema to assist Moussaoui -- who has said he wished to represent himself -- is expected to object that he is not mentally competent and therefore unable to enter a plea.

Should that argument fail, they probably would try to present evidence during the penalty trial that includes testimony about his mental state.

“The whole legal process has caught up with him,” said Randall Hamud, a San Diego lawyer who represents Moussaoui’s mother. “He’s been in total isolation in prison. He only interfaces with the guards, and there’s hostility from the guards. All this has taken its toll on him.”

Another source close to the case, who asked not to be identified, said Moussaoui’s “No. 1 problem is competency.”

“Everything else flows from that,” the official said. “My understanding, since he got arrested more than three years ago, is that he is getting worse every day. He wants to be a martyr, I guess. But what he really is is sick.”

The only way the sentencing decision would not go to a jury would be if both sides asked the judge to determine the appropriate punishment. That was considered unlikely.

The defense probably would prefer the judge to set punishment, because she is aware of his mental state after years in which he has railed against her and other legal officials in the courtroom and in handwritten missives.

The prosecution probably would prefer that jurors decided Moussaoui’s fate, betting that they would be more likely to call for his execution.

Eric H. Holder Jr., a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, said Wednesday that he had never heard of anyone pleading guilty to a charge that could bring them death.

“The stakes are really high for Mr. Moussaoui,” Holder said. “The question now is how much responsibility he will take for the tragic events of Sept. 11.”