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U.S. plans 1 witness in Moussaoui trial to describe WTC attack image

Zacarias Moussaoui, in a July courtroom sketch.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- In the first U.S. criminal trial stemming from September 11 terrorist attacks, federal prosecutors plan to call just one witness to summarize the visual evidence of the attacks on the World Trade Center that killed more than 2,800 people.

In a motion filed Thursday, prosecutors said they would call one detective from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the transportation agency that built and owned the Trade Center, to describe what happened, as captured in videotape and photographs.

"The attack on the World Trade Center and the resulting damage may be one of the most photographed and videotaped events in the history of the United States," prosecutors wrote.

They said they planned to call Port Authority Detective James Wheeler to summarize these images "instead of calling several persons (at least a dozen) to testify to each perspective of the WTC filmed."

Wheeler will testify at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, accused of conspiring with the 19 hijackers who commandeered four airliners and crashed them into the Twin Towers, as well as the Pentagon and field in Pennsylvania, killing more than 200 others.

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Wheeler has worked for the Port Authority for 23-years, the last nine as a police officer. He was at the Trade Center on September 11 and "narrowly escaped death," prosecutors said. Seventy-five Port Authority employees, including 37 police officers and the agency's executive director, were killed that day.

Wheeler took some of the photographs that would be introduced as evidence and would authenticate the sources of the rest.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who is presiding over the Moussaoui case, granted the government's motion. The trial is scheduled to begin with jury selection on September 30 at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia.

Moussaoui, 34, a French citizen of Moroccan heritage, was jailed in Minnesota on an immigration violation a month before the attacks. But prosecutors say he underwent paramilitary training in Afghanistan in 1998 and pilot training in the U.S. last year in preparation to commit terrorist acts.

Moussaoui allegedly received money last August from one of the plot organizers in Germany, according to prosecutors. Prosecutors said he used half of the money to pay for his enrollment in the Minneapolis flight school that reported his suspicious behavior to the FBI.

Moussaoui has admitted belonging to al Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist group behind the September 11 attacks, but he denied having a role in the plot. If convicted of certain conspiracy charges, Moussaoui, who is representing himself, could be subject to the death penalty.

Prosecutors said the visual evidence would be "particularly important" during a penalty phase as they would try to convince jurors that the Trade Center attack was committed in "an especially heinous, cruel, and depraved manner in that it involved torture or serious physical abuse to the victim," one criteria for imposing a death sentence.

Prosecutors said they planned to show jurors pre-September 11 photographs of each New York victim, instead of calling family members to describe their lost loved ones,

It did the same thing during last year's trial for the 1998 al Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.

The government said that to save time, it would like to stipulate that the September 11 hijackings happened and killed more than 3,000 people, along with other facts in the case.

Prosecutors indicated that Moussaoui is not responding to these overtures.

"It appears the government will be in the position of proving every aspect of this case, even those not in dispute," they said.

Brinkema has deemed Moussaoui mentally competent to act own lawyer, but she has kept five court-appointed attorneys on "standby" status to assist him with legal questions or step in for him if necessary.

Though Moussaoui refused to speak or meet with any of those attorneys for three months, he resumed communicating with them last week.

"I am glad to be talking to him," said standby counsel Alan Yamamoto. He said Moussaoui had been initiating the phone calls.