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| Moussaoui loses U.S. court appeal |
| 2010-01-06 |
| Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in a U.S. court on criminal charges related to the Sep. 11, 2001, attacks, lost a bid on Monday to overturn his guilty plea and his sentence of life in prison. A U.S. appeals court rejected arguments by Moussaoui, who is serving his sentence at a supermaximum federal security prison in Colorado, that his guilty plea was invalid because the U.S. government failed to turn over classified evidence that could have helped in his defense. "Moussaoui challenges the validity of his guilty plea and his sentences" on the various counts, the appeals court said in its ruling. "We affirm Moussaoui's convictions and sentences in their entirety." Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, pleaded guilty in 2005 to taking part in an al-Qaeda conspiracy to crash hijacked planes into U.S. buildings. The conspiracy included the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon. In 2006, a federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia, sentenced Moussaoui to life in prison, rejecting demands by prosecutors that he get the death penalty. Moussaoui testified at his trial that he was supposed to hijack a fifth plane and crash it into the White House. He was arrested several weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks after raising suspicions at a Minnesota flight school. A three-judge panel of a U.S. appeals court based in Richmond, Virginia, rejected arguments by Moussaoui's lawyers that his conviction should be overturned and he should be resentenced because his constitutional rights were violated. His attorneys had argued in the appeal that Moussaoui's trial preparations had been impaired because his lawyers could not tell him about classified evidence the government had that could have helped his case. His attorneys said Moussaoui had a fundamentally unfair trial and raised various other arguments, including that his choice of lawyer had been rejected. But U.S. Justice Department attorneys said U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who presided over the trial, made sure that Moussaoui understood his rights. They said Moussaoui wanted to plead guilty, against the advice of his lawyers, and that he knew the gist of the classified evidence in question. The court also rejected a request by Moussaoui to send the case back to Brinkema for further proceedings based on the government's disclosure of classified information while his appeal has been pending. "The finality of the guilty plea, entered knowingly, intelligently, and with sufficient awareness of the relevant circumstances and likely consequences, stands," the appeals court concluded at the end of a 78-page opinion. |
| Posted by:Fred |