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Judge denies Moussaoui plea to 'gag' attorney
From Phil Hirschkorn
ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (CNN) -- A federal judge has denied a request from Zacarias Moussaoui, the first man being prosecuted in the United States in connection for the September 11 terror attacks, to impose a gag order on the lead attorney assisting him. In doing so, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, reminded attorneys working on the case that court rules prohibit public statements about the evidence before it is presented at trial. Moussaoui's motion, to silence federal public defender Frank Dunham, is one of 10 pleadings by the defendant unsealed Wednesday, and the first collection of his writings seen in six weeks. All 10 of the unsealed documents were filed with the court before Brinkema delayed the trial for second time, pushing jury selection to next May 27, and the opening statements until June 30. In August, Brinkema had ruled that Moussaoui's voluminous, handwritten pleadings from jail be kept under seal when they included "threats, racial slurs, calls to action, or other irrelevant and inappropriate language," which they frequently did. The government had also worried that his writings, posted on the court's Internet site, could contain coded messages to sympathizers or conspirators around the world. Responding to a motion by CNN and several other media organizations stressing the public's right to know, Brinkema modified her order and agreed to unseal Moussaoui's motions after allowing the government time for a national security review. Almost all of the new motions have redactions, or cross-outs in black ink, but still contain jibes at the judge, prosecutors and defense attorneys. In one motion, Moussaoui accused Brinkema of "deep Islamaphobia." He refers to the United States as "The United Satan" and the FBI as the "Fascist Bureau of Inquisition." Moussaoui, 34, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, is acting as his own lawyer, but a team of five court-appointed attorneys, led by Dunham, are helping him defend himself against death-eligible conspiracy charges that he associated with al Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist group accused of being behind the September 11 attacks. The United States also accuses Moussaoui of training to be one of the hijackers who commandeered four planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing about 3,000 people. "Dunham is exploiting my death penalty to become famous. Frankly, who knew him before 9/11," Moussaoui writes. The two men have had a fragile relationship since Moussaoui's case was moved to the Eastern District of Virginia in January, often sparring on strategy and, lately, communicating through an intermediary. "Leonie Brinkema must order Dunham to keep his mouth shut," Moussaoui wrote in another motion. "Dunham is not my lawyer." Moussaoui admits belonging to al Qaeda and swearing allegiance to its leader, Osama bin Laden, but denies any role in the September 11 plot, and he continues to try to trim the criminal acts alleged in his indictment. In one of the new motions, he asks that al Qaeda's alleged efforts to obtain components of nuclear and chemical weapons or bin Laden's calls for the violent expulsion of U.S. troops from Muslim lands such as Somalia be stricken for being "inflammatory" and irrelevant to his case. Prosecutors have previously said these alleged acts put in context the core allegation of the indictment: that al Qaeda declared war on the United States and sought to murder Americans "en masse" in a decade-long terrorism conspiracy. Moussaoui's efforts to change his plea to guilty over the summer broke down when he refused to admit responsibility for everything alleged in the indictment. The new motions reveal part of Moussaoui's thinking in requesting the six-month delay that Brinkema granted on Sept. 30. He complained of the time lost when investigators searched his jailhouse work room for up to 48 classified documents that the government mistakenly handed over to him as part of pretrial evidence sharing, or discovery. The sensitive papers were among thousands of documents and dozens of CD-ROMs in evidence. "All my work organization have been destroyed by the search," Moussaoui wrote. "Basically I have to start from zero." Responding to Moussaoui's complaints about jail conditions, Brinkema has given standby counsel the green light to photograph Moussaoui's cell and adjoining work room. The judge has also ordered the Alexandria Detention Center to move him to a larger space.
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