‘20th hijacker’ due in court

The alleged al-Qaida terrorist dubbed the 20th hijacker was today due to tell a US court how he would plead.

Zacarias Moussaoui was due to appear in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, where he will tell a judge if he is pleading guilty or not guilty to six charges of conspiracy to hijack planes and commit mass murder.

The 32-year-old Muslim is alleged to be a member of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida group and American prosecutors have accused him of being involved in a plot to commit similar terrorist attacks to the September 11 kamikaze hijackers.

The 30-page list of charges against him does not make clear if he was involved in the same conspiracy as the 19 dead men, but he has already been dubbed the 20th hijacker because of the similarities between the allegations and the activities of the hijackers.

He will be formally arraigned in the court under heavy security, and appear in front of United States District Judge Leonie Brinkema in a brief hearing when he will learn the date of his trial.

The judge is expected to set trial as early as spring and prosecutors will then have to announce if they will seek execution for Moussaoui.

Four of the six charges he faces carry the death penalty and all carry mandatory sentences of life in prison.

French-born Moussaoui spent much of the last nine years living in south London and gained a masters degree in international business at South Bank University.

He was arrested in August by the FBI after he aroused suspicion at a flight school in Minnesota, where he could barely fly but paid in cash for lessons on piloting jumbo jets, and told instructors he was not interested in how to take off or land.

He was held by immigration authorities until September 11, when the FBI took a fresh look at his case and learned from French intelligence that he had been under surveillance as a suspected al-Qaida operative.

The French-Moroccan was flown to New York, where he was held in a federal prison just a few hundred yards from the remains of the World Trade Centre, and appeared in open court for the first time last month.

The French government has called for him to be sent to Paris to face trial and Isabelle Coutant Peyre, the fiancee and lawyer of notorious 1970s terrorist Carlos the Jackal, has offered to represent him.

The charges against him allege that he received money from the same sources in Germany and the Middle East which bankrolled the September 11 hijackers, and that he trained at the same terrorist camps in Afghanistan they attended.

He also attended flight schools, acquired knives and bought a Boeing 747 flight manual and videos - the same as the dead men.

Prosecutors do not have to show he was the 20th hijacker, but that he was linked to them and by his actions was conspiring to carry out the same kind of attack as the al-Qaida operatives.

But defence lawyers have already indicated he will plead not guilty.

Moussaoui was also linked to Richard Reid, the alleged shoe bomber, who is accused of attempting to blow up an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami with plastic explosives concealed in his shoe.

The two worshipped at Brixton Mosque in south London and Reid was apparently recruited by radical elements which infiltrated the widely-respected mosque.