Moussaoui dreamt of attacking US, court hears

A MAN matching the description of al-Qaida adherent Zacarias Moussaoui told an Islamic radical in Malaysia he had a dream about flying a plane into the White House, and was to be given cash by a south-East Asian terrorist group during that trip, according to court testimony yesterday.

The jury at Moussaoui’s sentencing trial for terrorist conspiracy watched videotaped testimony from Fauzi bin Abu Bakar Bafana, acknowledged treasurer of the South-East Asian Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist network, a group linked to al-Qaida. Moussaoui is the only man charged in the US in connection with the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Bafana said he was asked to host a man known to him as John at his home in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1999 and John talked to him about dreams he had in his sleep, including one to attack the White House with an airliner. The deposition was taken in 2002, after Bafana was arrested in Singapore. At the time, Moussaoui was his own lawyer and raised objections to the testimony, most of which were overruled.

The testimony on the third day of the trial was part of the prosecution’s case that Moussaoui deserves the death penalty instead of life in prison. The government argues if Moussaoui had not lied about his terrorist links and the flight training he took in the US, the government would have unravelled the September 11 plot.