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Feds: Moussaoui can represent himself -- but shouldn't

Zacarias Moussaoui

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (CNN) -- Federal prosecutors said Friday that accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui is competent to defend himself himself at trial, but called the request "ill-advised" and "self-destructive."

In papers filed Friday, the government asked Judge Leonie Brinkema to schedule the standard hearing that would allow Moussaoui to formally waive his right to be represented by a lawyer and to make sure he understands the risks of representing himself.

Moussaoui had made the surprise request during an April pretrial conference, delivering an hour-long courtroom diatribe against the United States. He said he did not trust his court-appointed attorneys and said he would prefer to represent himself or hire different lawyers -- preferably Muslims.

The 33-year-old French-Moroccan defendant is charged with conspiracy to commit terrorist acts in the first U.S. criminal proceeding directly related to the September 11 attacks. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

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The government has suggested he might have intended to be the 20th hijacker in the plot to commandeer the airliners that hijackers crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing more than 3,000 people.

Brinkema has scheduled a hearing next Thursday on the question of Moussaoui's mental competency and appointed a Washington-based psychiatrist, Dr. Raymond Patterson, to examine him. Patterson, who has met for two hours with Moussaoui, filed his final report on Friday.

The report has been sealed from public view, but court papers filed by prosecutors shed light on the doctor's views: "Dr. Patterson opined that Mr. Moussaoui is not suffering from a mental disease or defect such that he is incompetent to waive counsel," prosecutors wrote.

Prosecutors described his writings as "rational," and his attendance at two American flight schools last year -- including 50 hours of flight training in a single-engine plane -- was further proof of his sanity.

Still, prosecutors called Moussaoui's petition a poor strategic move.

"Defendant's professed desire to take the ill-advised course of firing skilled counsel and representing himself does not suggest that he is mentally incompetent," they said. "Nearly every criminal defendant who chooses to represent himself is committing a self-destructive act."

Defense counsel could not immediately be reached for comment, but also faced a Friday deadline to file its papers on this question. They had hired two psychologists to file a separate report.

Moussaoui was in a Minnesota jail on September 11 on an immigration violation. He had been taken into federal custody after local flight instructors reported a month earlier that he was acting suspiciously, asking to be trained on 747s when he hadn't yet earned a pilot's license.

The indictment against him states that he underwent the same preparation as the 19 men who carried out the September 11 attacks -- flight training, weapons and explosives training at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan -- and that he received money from the same conspirator in Germany.

Moussaoui is charged with conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism, to pirate and destroy aircraft, to use weapons of mass destruction, to destroy property and to murder Americans.

-- CNN producers Phil Hirschkorn, Kevin Bohn, and Terry Frieden contributed to this report