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A French Moroccan man jailed a month before the Sept. 11 attacks is accused of conspiring to kill thousands.
By MARY JACOBY
© St. Petersburg Times, published December 12, 2001
WASHINGTON -- In the first charges directly related to Sept. 11, a federal grand jury in Virginia on Tuesday indicted a French Moroccan for conspiring to carry out the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
The indictment alleges Zacarias Moussaoui, 33, spent time at an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan in 1998. It lays out a detailed but largely circumstantial case that Moussaoui was prepared to join the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 plot. And it names Osama bin Laden as an unindicted co-conspirator.
Authorities think Moussaoui, 33, was thwarted by instructors at a Minnesota flight school who told the FBI in August that he was acting suspiciously. Moussaoui wanted to learn to fly a commercial jetliner, even though his skills were poor, and he showed no interest in taking off or landing.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service detained him Aug. 16 on an immigration violation.
The FBI initially did not know what to make of Moussaoui. But after Sept. 11, federal authorities classified him as a material witness thought to have information about the plot and continued to hold him. On Tuesday, he was charged.
The six-count indictment alleges Moussaoui conspired to use pirated aircraft as weapons of mass destruction to murder United States employees, destroy property and commit terrorism.
On the three-month anniversary of the attacks, Attorney General John Ashcroft called the indictment a "chronicle of evil." He added: "Al-Qaida will now meet the justice it abhors and the judgment it fears."
Asked why prosecutors did not also seek an indictment against bin Laden, Ashcroft said: "Well, we have indicted the individual that we have in custody at this particular time. And I wouldn't -- other than that, I wouldn't draw any conclusions about the fact that others are unindicted."
He said naming bin Laden as a co-conspirator "does not in any way" preclude the U.S. government from indicting him in the future.
Among others named as unindicted co-conspirators are Ayman al-Zawahiri, a leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and top bin Laden adviser; Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, accused of funneling money to the hijackers from the United Arab Emirates; and the 19 hijackers who died in the crashes.
FBI director Robert Mueller touched on the circumstantial nature of many of the charges when he said they show Moussaoui following the same patterns as the 19 hijackers.
Those patterns include enrolling in U.S. flight schools, making inquiries about crop dusting, joining a gym, and buying knives and global positioning system equipment, which is used for navigation.
According to the indictment, Moussaoui also purchased flight-deck training videos for Boeing 747s from the same aviation store in Ohio where suspected fellow hijackers Mohamed Atta and Nawaf al-Hazmi bought the same materials.
Previously, Mueller had said investigators thought another man, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, was the intended 20th hijacker. Al-Shibh is thought to have been part of the terrorist cell in Hamburg, Germany, that included the suspected ringleader of the hijackings, Atta, and fellow hijackers Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah.
U.S. authorities rejected al-Shibh's requests for an entry visa four times between May and October 2000. During that time, Jarrah, who is thought to have piloted the United Airlines plane that crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers resisted, tried to enroll al-Shibh in a flight school in Florida, the indictment says.
Al-Shibh was also named an unindicted co-conspirator.
Mueller would not comment Tuesday about whether Moussaoui was a replacement for al-Shibh, but he suggested as much.
"If you parse the indictment you will see that Bin al-Shibh attempted four times to come into the United States and was rejected on those four occasions. Subsequent to that fourth time he was rejected, you will see Mr. Moussaoui attempting to come in the United States. Those are the allegations in the indictment, and the indictment speaks for itself," Mueller said.
Moussaoui arrived in Chicago on Feb. 23 from London and declared $35,000 in cash on a customs form. He had flown to London earlier in the month from Pakistan.
Three days later, Moussaoui was in Norman, Okla., where he deposited $32,000 in a bank account and began attending the Airman Flight School.
For some reason, the Oklahoma school did not suit him. On May 23, he e-mailed the office of Pan Am International Flight Academy in Miami shortly before ending his Oklahoma classes early.
On Aug. 1 and 3, al-Shibh wired about $14,000 in money orders to Moussaoui in Oklahoma, the charges say. On Aug. 10, Moussaoui paid $6,300 in cash for training at another Pan Am International Flight Academy, this one in Minnesota. By Aug. 16, Moussaoui was in federal custody after his flight instructors tipped off the FBI. Among his possessions were two knives, binoculars, flight manuals for the Boeing 747-400, a flight simulator computer program and "fighting gloves" and shin guards.
A notebook contained a telephone number in Germany that al-Shibh had listed as his residence on a visa application and the name "Ahad Sabet," an alias al-Shibh had used to wire him money.
He also had a computer disc holding information about aerial pesticide spraying and software to review pilot procedures for a Boeing 747-400.
At that point, local FBI agents sought authority to search Moussaoui's computer hard disc. But Justice Department lawyers in Washington denied the request, saying there was not enough evidence to suggest that Moussaoui was attempting to commit a crime.
Mueller criticized that decision Tuesday.
"All I can tell you is that the agents on the scene attempted to follow up aggressively. The attorneys back at FBI determined that there was insufficient probable cause (to authorize a search), which appears to be an inaccurate decision. And Sept. 11th happened," Mueller said.
Four of the charges against Moussaoui carry the death penalty. As the defendant in a capital crime, he is entitled to two court-appointed lawyers. Justice Department officials said Moussaoui had an attorney during his initial detention but has not been assigned one yet to represent him against the terrorism charges.
The department would not say where Moussaoui is being held. An arraignment is scheduled Jan. 2 in federal court in Alexandria, Va.
Ashcroft said Moussaoui will be tried in Virginia instead of New York because of its proximity to Justice Department and FBI teams leading the Sept. 11 investigations. A trial in Virginia also recognizes that the "Sept. 11th attack struck at one of the most important institutions of government, the United States Pentagon," he said.
The Pentagon is across the Potomac River from Washington in the suburb of Arlington, Va.
But Bill Otis, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, offered another explanation. "There's a greater likelihood of getting the death penalty in eastern Virginia," he said, because the public is more accepting of it than in New York.
He noted that a New York jury declined to give the death penalty to terrorists convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center that killed six.
Ashcroft might also be considering Virginia's reputation as the "rocket docket." Judges there like to move quickly to trial because they "believe that justice delayed is justice denied," said Otis, an adjunct professor of law at George Mason University.
The indictment, meanwhile, puts to rest speculation that President Bush would use a military tribunal to try Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan ancestry.
Ashcroft would not speak directly about the decision to try Moussaoui in federal court, saying only, "This case merely indicates that my responsibility is to bring charges against those who commit crimes and are to be tried in the criminal justice system."
-- Indictment text of Zacarias Moussaoui, Department of Justice Web site.