dictionary

Muslim attorney visits Moussaoui in jail

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (CNN) -- A Muslim attorney with experience handling controversial cases has approached accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui about assisting his defense.

Charles Edward Freeman, who is based in Houston, recently visited with Moussaoui at the Alexandria Detention Center, where Moussaoui has been incarcerated since last December and is now awaiting the start of his trial in September.

Edward MacMahon, one of the four court-appointed attorneys fired by Moussaoui, confirmed that Freeman met Moussaoui after writing a letter to the defendant. Freeman did not return several phone calls Friday.

RESOURCES Read the indictment: U.S. v. Moussaoui  (FindLaw PDF document)     LEGAL RESOURCES Latest Legal News Law Library FindLaw Consumer Center Select a topic Bankruptcy Discrimination Divorce Estate Planning Landlord-Tenant Personal Injury Taxes

During a Thursday court hearing in which U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema granted Moussaoui the right to represent himself, Moussaoui said an attorney from outside Virginia had volunteered his services.

"He will work for me on a no-fees basis, because he's a Muslim lawyer," Moussaoui said.

Freeman, 54, is a Muslim convert, according to the Houston Chronicle. He is a graduate of the University of Houston Law School and Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, according to the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory.

Moussaoui, 34, from France, is the first person facing U.S. criminal charges in connection with the September 11 terrorist attacks.

He is accused of conspiring with the 19 known hijackers in the plot that resulted in planes crashing into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a rural field in Pennsylvania, killing more than 3,000 people.

The government is seeking the death penalty.

Although Moussaoui was jailed in Minnesota on an immigration charge a month before the attacks, prosecutors say he directly contributed to the victims' deaths by training as a pilot to participate in the plot and by lying to federal agents to cover it up.

In a pretrial hearing April 22, Moussaoui told Brinkema he did not trust his court-appointed federal defenders and wanted them removed from the case. Freeman wrote his letter the next day, according to Moussaoui.

Brinkema declared Moussaoui mentally competent to handle his own defense Thursday, but said she would seek to appoint stand-by counsel to help him handle court procedures, review classified evidence Moussaoui would not be allowed to see, and interview potential witnesses while Moussaoui is behind bars.

"I don't believe the world is going to look favorably at a capital trial, where the defendant is shackled in every way," MacMahon said.

He said he and the other Virginia attorneys who had been defending Moussaoui had recommended six other Muslim attorneys in addition to Freeman to help Moussaoui, but the defendant refused to meet any of them.

Moussaoui said Freeman told him he has handled four capital cases. In one of them in 1996, according to the Chronicle, a jury took only 45 minutes to sentence a 22-year-old man to death for killing a man in a drug deal.

According to published reports, Freeman also represented a convicted rapist who asked to be castrated as a condition for probation on charges of sexually molesting a child. The plea bargain, advocated by a judge, never happened; Freeman got involved afterward.

If Freeman comes on board, he will have a short time to familiarize himself with a voluminous amount of evidence. Prosecutors have already turned over more than 1,000 CDs of documents, nearly 500 audiotapes, and 200 computer hard drives.

"Moussaoui couldn't read it all if he started today," MacMahon said.

On Friday, Judge Brinkema ordered that a computer be delivered to the Alexandria jail to assist Moussaoui in reviewing unclassified evidence.