Zacarias Moussaoui (, ; born 30 May 1968) is a French terrorist who was a member of the al-Qaeda militant organization. He likely planned to participate in the September 11 attacks (9/11) in 2001, in which 19 members of al-Qaeda hijacked four American airliners in an attempt to crash them into U.S. landmarks.
Many of the hijackers went to flight schools in the U.S. in the lead-up to the attacks. In August 2001, while Moussaoui attended one in Minnesota, he aroused suspicion and was arrested by the FBI for violating immigration laws. In December, he was indicted by a federal grand jury on six felony charges relating to the attacks.
Prosecutors alleged Moussaoui was going to be al-Qaeda's "20th hijacker", after Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Zakariya Essabar were denied visas to enter the US. Legal analysts viewed his trial as a barometer of America's ability to give a fair hearing to terrorism suspects after 9/11. Moussaoui argued he was not involved in the attacks, but instead had been planning a similar attack of his own. Some al-Qaeda members reportedly corroborated his defense, but prosecutors believed it had no merit.
In May 2006, Moussaoui was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The jurors voted against him receiving the death penalty, citing his unstable childhood and possible ignorance of al-Qaeda's plans. He is currently held at the ADX Florence federal supermax prison in Colorado, and remains the only person ever convicted in an American civilian court of a crime in connection with 9/11.
Early life Aicha el-Wafi, Moussaoui's mother, was 14 when she was married to a man that she did not previously know,The Independent, 8 September 2011, 'I Love My Son More Than Ever..' The 9/11 Terrorist's Mother Who Won't Give Up p, 26-27 in Morocco.Kennedy, Helen. Terrorist's mom gets hug. New York Daily News (2006-03-14). Five years later, Moussaoui's parents moved to France, where he was born. After enduring domestic violence, his mother left his father Omar while her four children were still young. She raised her children on a cleaner's wages. There was no religious education within the family. Witnesses testified at Moussaui's trial that, as first-generation immigrants from Morocco, the family frequently faced racism in their new country. From 1982, Moussaoui, his brother and sisters, were brought up in a bungalow on the edge of the town of Narbonne. His mother has said that she believes two 'wounding' incidents in his French adolescence contributed to the formation of an extremist sensibility: the first the day that his school careers adviser pushed him towards minor, technical studies, with "the clear implication that he was only an Arab and would need nothing more," and the second the day that the father of his teenage sweetheart warned him off because he was an Arab. "'Don't think that you will ever get your feet under my table', the man said."The Independent, 8 September 2011
According to his brother, Abd Samad Moussaoui, Zacarias loved to play handball:My Brother Zac. The Guardian Unlimited (2003-04-18).
For Zacarias [his brother wrote in the Guardian], handball quickly became more than a sport—it was his passion. He was brilliant. Everyone recognized it—his trainers, his team-mates, even his opponents. For Zacarias, the future was all mapped out. He would study and play sports.
Militant training Moussaoui has been known by other names, reportedly including Abu Khaled al Sahrawi and Shaquil while he was in Oklahoma. He holds a master's degree in International Business from South Bank University in London, having enrolled in 1993 and graduated in 1995.Woodward, Will. Hijack suspect was South Bank student. The Guardian (2001-10-06). He attended, amongst others, the Brixton Mosque, where he may have met Richard Reid, the future shoe bomber. He was proselytised by groups such as al-Muhajiroun ("the Emigrants"), who leafleted people attending moderate mosques such as that in Brixton. It is possible that he had connections with members of the Finsbury Park mosque, where the extremist Abu Hamza al-Masri taught.
French authorities began monitoring Moussaoui in 1996 when they observed him with Islamic extremists in London. In 1998, he attended the Khalden training camp in Afghanistan, allegedly returning the next year as well. In September 2000, he visited Malaysia and stayed in a condominium owned by Yazid Sufaat who, in October 2000, signed letters identifying Moussaoui as a representative of his company. Two of 11 September hijackers lived in the same condominium in January 2000. Jemaah Islamiah leader Riduan Ismauddin sent Sufaat to provide Moussaoui with and travel documents in Malaysia in October.
Flight training From 26 February to 29 May 2001, Moussaoui attended flight training courses at Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma. Despite 57 hours of flying lessons, he failed and left without ever having flown solo. This school was also visited by Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, who piloted planes into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center.
During his time in Norman, Moussaoui had a roommate named Hussein al-Attas. On 11 August 2001, Hussein al-Attas drove Moussaoui to Minnesota from Oklahoma. Hussein al-Attas said that he and Moussaoui planned to take a trip to New York City in late August/early September 2001. In 2002, al-Attas admitted that he lied to the FBI to conceal
Moussaoui's name, extremist jihadi and anti-American beliefs, and his efforts to radicalize al-Attas; his (al-Attas's) own radical tendencies; and the names of other Middle Easterners who were taking flight lessons in Oklahoma.
Moussaoui allegedly received US$14,000 in wire transfers from bin al-Shibh, originating from Düsseldorf and Hamburg, Germany, in early August. This money could have helped him pay for flight training he took about two weeks later at Pan-Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minnesota. On 13 August, Moussaoui paid US$6,800 with US$100 bills to receive training in a 747-400 simulator. Moussaoui was reportedly considered as a replacement for Ziad Jarrah, who at one point threatened to withdraw from the scheme because of tensions amongst the plotters. Plans to include Moussaoui were never completed because the al-Qaeda hierarchy allegedly had doubts about his reliability.
Clarence Prevost, the flight instructor assigned to Moussaoui, began to have suspicions about his student. His behavior largely resembled that of other seemingly wealthy men who had come to the center in the past to receive jumbo jet training despite the fact that they would likely never use it, but some characteristics were unusual. Prevost said later that in pre-simulator instruction, Moussaoui would ask questions that had the right jargon but were otherwise nonsensical. Moussaoui read through the 747 training manuals, but had a lack of understanding of the plane's systems. Prevost was confused as to why Moussaoui would seek simulator time if he lacked basic plane knowledge. After some convincing, his supervisors contacted the FBI, who came to meet with him. (Despite later reports, Moussaoui did not skip the training for takeoff and landing).Flight instructor gets $5 million for catching terror suspect CNN (2008-01-25)
Capture On 16 August 2001, Moussaoui was arrested by Harry Samit of the FBI and INS agents in Minnesota and charged with an immigration violation. Materials itemized when he was arrested included a laptop computer, two knives, flight manuals pertaining to Boeing's 747 aircraft, a flight simulator computer program, fighting gloves and shin guards, and a computer disk with information about crop dusting.
Some agents worried that his flight training had violent intentions, so the Minnesota bureau tried to get permission (sending over 70 emails in a week) to search his laptop, but they were turned down. FBI agent Coleen Rowley made an explicit request for permission to search Moussaoui's personal rooms. This request was first denied by her superior, Deputy General Counsel Marion "Spike" Bowman, and later rejected based upon FISA regulations (amended after 9/11 by the USA Patriot Act). Several further search attempts similarly failed.
Ahmed Ressam, the captured al-Qaeda Millennium Bomber, was at the time sharing information with the US authorities, in an effort to gain leniency in his sentencing. One person whom he was not asked about until after 9/11, but whom he was able to identify when asked as having trained with him at al-Qaeda's Khalden Camp in Afghanistan, was Moussaoui. The 9/11 Commission Report opined that had Ressam been asked about Moussaoui, he would have broken the FBI's logjam. Had that happened, the report opined, the U.S. might conceivably have disrupted or derailed the 9/11 attacks altogether.
On 24 January 2008, Clarence Prevost, the flight instructor who led authorities to Moussaoui, received a $5 million reward from the U.S. government. The payment was questioned by agent Coleen Rowley and Senators Amy Klobuchar and Norm Coleman, among others, on the basis that two other flight instructors had made the initial calls to the FBI.Dialing For Dollars , Newsweek, 30 Jan 2008
Court proceedings On 11 December 2001, Moussaoui was indicted by a federal grand jury in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on six felony charges: conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy, conspiracy to destroy aircraft, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, conspiracy to murder United States employees, and conspiracy to destroy property.UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI - Indictment. United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia Alexandria Division, United States Department of Justice, December 2001. Retrieved on 2007-01-03. The indictment of Zacarias Moussaoui named as unindicted co-conspirators Ramzi Bin al-Shibh and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, among others, for their role in the attack "to murder thousands of innocent people in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania".
On 2 January 2002, Moussaoui refused to enter any plea to the charges and so Judge Leonie Brinkema entered pleas of not guilty. A hearing was held on 22 April 2002, to determine his right to self-representation, for by then Moussaoui had declined the assistance of his court-appointed attorneys, and asked to defend himself. At another hearing on 13 June 2002, Brinkema deemed him competent to defend himself and allowed the case to move forward. However, Moussaoui later requested the occasional assistance of attorneys to help him with technical issues.
Moussaoui admitted his involvement with al-Qaeda, but claimed he was not involved in the 9/11 attacks. Rather, he claimed that he was preparing for a separate attack. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had earlier told investigators that Moussaoui met with him prior to 11 September, but that he, Mohammed, chose not to use him. No evidence directly linking Moussaoui to the 9/11 attacks has yet been released.
The trial highlighted a tension in the United States between the judiciary and national security. Moussaoui made requests for access to confidential documents and the right to call captive al-Qaeda members as witnesses, notably bin al-Shibh, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi. Both requests were claimed by prosecutors to be potential threats to national security. Brinkema denied the motion to access confidential documents, although Moussaoui was permitted to use several al-Qaeda prisoners as witnesses.