Suspect Flown to Virginia for Hearing in U.S. Court

Zacarias Moussaoui, the first person indicted in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was flown from New York to a suburban Washington courthouse Wednesday and ordered held in custody on conspiracy charges that carry a possible death penalty.

Also Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema was chosen to preside over the high-profile case. A former Justice Department prosecutor, Brinkema was nominated to the federal bench by President Clinton in 1993.

In U.S. District Court, U.S. Magistrate Thomas Jones said a previous order keeping Moussaoui in federal custody should remain in effect at least until the next scheduled hearing. Moussaoui is set to be arraigned Jan. 2.

With a full beard and wearing a brown shirt and khaki pants, Moussaoui, 33, sat motionless as Jones summarized the six counts against him.

“You are here because an indictment was returned” by a federal grand jury, Jones explained. He told Moussaoui he is being charged with conspiring to commit acts of terrorism, aircraft piracy, destruction of aircraft, use of weapons of mass destruction, murder of government employees and destruction of U.S. property.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Robert Spencer said four of the six counts could result in the death penalty and that the other two counts carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan descent, did not speak during the brief hearing.

Moussaoui’s defense lawyer, Gerald Zerkin, had no comment on what his client intended to plead, but another defense attorney said last week that the alleged terrorist conspirator has maintained his innocence. In a letter sent from prison to his mother, Moussaoui contended that he had nothing to do with the attacks .

About a dozen U.S. marshals were in the courtroom, including two in plainclothes who escorted Moussaoui to a table to join his lawyers. Some armed marshals, wearing bulletproof vests, guarded the building and patrolled the perimeter.

Earlier Wednesday, the head of the U.S. Marshals Service, Benigno Reyna, said security would be at the highest level for all court proceedings involving Moussaoui.

“We’re preparing for any situation that may arise,” Reyna said.

The courthouse is a short distance from where one hijacked jetliner crashed into the Pentagon.

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft announced the indictment last week. He said Moussaoui would be tried in a federal court rather than before a military tribunal, which President Bush had proposed for foreign-born terrorists accused of being involved in the attacks.

Moussaoui was charged with conspiring with the 19 hijackers--and Osama bin Laden and his top aides--to murder thousands of victims in the attacks. Although Bin Laden, top aide Ayman Al-Zawahiri and others were named as co-conspirators, they were not indicted.

Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller suggested that Moussaoui may have been preparing to be a member of one of the four hijacking teams that carried out the attacks. They said another man, Ramzi Binalshibh, was apparently the 20th hijacker but that he was denied entry into the United States on four tries.

At that time, Ashcroft and Mueller said, Moussaoui began his trip from his home in London to the United States, where he signed up for flight training school and engaged in other behavior that closely mirrored activities of some of the hijackers.

Convicted terrorist Ahmed Ressam has told FBI officials that Moussaoui attended the same terrorist training camp as he did in Afghanistan in 1998. The allegations by Ressam, who is cooperating with federal authorities, would likely come up in Moussaoui’s trial, in which authorities will attempt to prove that he was an active member of Al Qaeda, Bin Laden’s global terrorist network.

Moussaoui was arrested Aug. 17 on immigration violations after he aroused suspicion among flight school employees in Minnesota because of his eagerness to learn how to fly a commercial airliner. He was still in custody Sept. 11, and authorities have presented no specific evidence establishing a direct connection between him and any of the hijackers.

But Ashcroft said Moussaoui had connections to the same Hamburg, Germany, terrorist cell as alleged hijacking ringleader Mohamed Atta and that he bought knives and inquired about crop dusting, as did Atta and other hijackers.

The selection of Judge Brinkema was praised by several defense lawyers Wednesday, who described her as fair, impartial and able to move such a high-profile case along briskly, even though she has limited experience with cases involving national security.