WASHINGTON - Lawyers for alleged Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui argued Friday that their client is incompetent to plead guilty to crimes that carry a possible death sentence.
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The filing came just hours ahead of a hearing before U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who earlier in the week met with Moussaoui and determined he was competent to enter such a plea.
In the latest strange twist in a case that has been full of them, Moussaoui's lawyers filed papers under seal at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Va., titled, "Sealed Suggestion of Defense Counsel as to Defendant's Incompetence to Plead Guilty and for a Sentence of Death."
Moussaoui's lawyers declined to comment but previously had said such a filing was planned.
Moussaoui is the only person charged in the United States in connection to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. The hearing was scheduled after Moussaoui sent Brinkema a letter saying he wanted to plead guilty.
The mercurial Moussaoui still could change his mind about pleading guilty, which he did once before.
Arrested a month before terrorist hijackers crashed four jetliners into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, Moussaoui is symbolic of a conflict different from any the United States has ever fought.
A French citizen of Moroccan descent who was the product of a broken family, Moussaoui's path to one of Osama bin-Laden's training camps in Afghanistan apparently began when he moved to England and became involved with radical Muslim clerics.
"In London, he was far away from me" and "I was his only safeguard," Abd Samad Moussaoui wrote of his younger brother in a book, "The Making of a Terrorist."
Picked up in August 2001 after arousing suspicion at a Minnesota flight school, Moussaoui was transformed from an immigration violator into a terrorist defendant three months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"Moussaoui was a missed opportunity for the United States," Tim Roemer, a member of the Sept. 11 commission, said Friday on NBC's "Today" show. Roemer said better communication by various agencies about Moussaoui "might have unveiled parts of this plot" before the attacks.
Moussaoui's criminal trial was to have been an evidentiary showcase detailing the horror of al-Qaida. Those plans would be scuttled by Friday's scheduled guilty plea to a six-count indictment.
Jumping past a trial, the lawyers Moussaoui tried to fire would eventually be defending him in a penalty phase proceeding, a sort of mini-trial before 12 jurors who will decide whether to spare his life.
Some legal experts say Moussaoui's decisions seem to make no sense, unless he wants to die.
One possibility is that "he was deprived of his martyrdom and feels the only way he can achieve that lofty state is simply to admit to the crimes," Washington defense attorney Richard Hibey suggested. It's an outlook that says "trust to Allah that he will be granted what he wants through the pronouncement of a court."
Criminal defense attorney David Schertler says Moussaoui "defies any conventional sense of what a defendant is and what a defendant is trying to accomplish. It seems that he is using the system to make a political statement regardless of what implications it has for him."
Moussaoui's scribbled diatribes attacking Brinkema, his own lawyers and the U.S. government litter the record of his court case and are posted on the Internet for all the world to see.
Moussaoui is charged with conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism, commit aircraft piracy, destroy aircraft, murder government employees and destroy property. The first four charges carry a maximum sentence of death.
Two failed lawsuits in which Moussaoui sought $20 million each for alleged jailhouse abuse provide new glimpses into his thinking after three years of solitary confinement at the Alexandria, Va., Detention Center.
Moussaoui said a guard went berserk after Moussaoui tried peacefully to explain that the United States was cursed by God because of a Sodom and Gomorrah type of society.
In his motions, Moussaoui refers to himself as a "Natural Born Terrorist" and the "Unique Best Lawyer," an apparent tribute to terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, whose first name is often spelled Usama, creating the initials UBL.
In the second case, Moussaoui apparently resisted efforts to take him to the courthouse for a scheduled deposition. Moussaoui has been difficult to handle at times, John Clark, the U.S. marshal for the Eastern District of Virginia, said.
"He can be somewhat moody," said Clark, adding that Moussaoui's allegations were overdramatic.
Whether Moussaoui was intended to be a participant in the Sept. 11 attacks is unclear.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the purported Sept. 11 mastermind, considered replacing the pilot of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania with Moussaoui, according to the Sept. 11 commission report. Mohammed, however, has told his interrogators that Moussaoui actually was being considered for a second wave of attacks still in the early planning stages.
Another reason I'm not fond of lawyers
