Moussaoui Linked to 9/11 Hijacker, Prosecutors Say

WASHINGTON —  Federal prosecutors for the first time publicly linked Zacarias Moussaoui to one of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers on Tuesday, a move some legal experts said could bolster the government’s effort to convict the French-born militant of conspiring to help commit the attacks.

The allegation, contained in court papers, goes beyond the indirect connections that the government charged in its indictment of Moussaoui last year.

But the larger question, several legal experts and Moussaoui’s defense team said, was whether such a link can be proven, and what the government has in its files to back it up.

In a court filing unsealed Tuesday, U.S. prosecutors seeking the death penalty against Moussaoui, 34, said they can link him to Ziad Samir Jarrah, the presumed pilot of the hijacked plane that was headed for the Washington area but crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers challenged the hijackers.

Authorities found a business card “belonging to Jarrah” in the rubble with a phone number written on back; phone records showed that Moussaoui had called that number, the prosecutors said.

The document was filed in support of the government’s argument to play the cockpit voice recording from the hijacked plane at trial.

“Jarrah’s role as a hijacker on [United Airlines] Flight 93 is important to the government’s evidence linking defendant [Moussaoui] to the conspiracy,” the prosecutors wrote in the filing to the court. “In the end, the [cockpit voice recordings] constitute probative evidence that directly substantiates the overt acts charged in the indictment, thus tipping the scale heavily in favor of admissibility.”

Justice Department officials declined to comment on the legal filing, as did members of Moussaoui’s standby legal team, appointed by the judge in the case to help him as he acts as his own lawyer.

But defense counsel Frank W. Dunham Jr. said that, in general, he was skeptical of the link’s importance, noting that no such link was mentioned in the lengthy indictment of Moussaoui last year.

Authorities have not disclosed key details, including who the phone number was registered to or that person’s relationship to Moussaoui or Jarrah. “This is a telephone contact on the back of a business card,” Dunham said.

Defense lawyer Plato Cacheris described the link as “tenuous,” and said that Moussaoui and Jarrah having access to the same phone number doesn’t mean the two ever used it to speak to each other. Even if the number belonged to an Al Qaeda operative that both men knew, that too would not necessarily prove that the two men had ever met, much less discussed the conspiracy and agreed to work together on it, said Cacheris. “I wouldn’t be too excited about it, honestly.”

Jonathan Turley, a defense attorney and George Washington University law professor, agreed that the disclosure may not bolster the government’s case that Moussaoui was meant to be the 20th hijacker or that he played some other role in the conspiracy.

“But it’s a link, and as tenuous as the link may be as a legal matter, it is likely to be magnified in the minds of a jury,” Turley said. “I don’t think it moves them as a legal matter to securing the death penalty, but it is likely to add to the weight for a conviction.”

Prosecutors said they can prove Jarrah was on the plane by matching his voice with the voice of one of the hijackers caught on tape, based on the testimony of one of Jarrah’s classmates at a Florida flight training school who says the voices match.

And they said in the filing unsealed Tuesday that the jury needs to hear the voice recordings, despite the defense team’s contention that they are too graphic and overly prejudicial to Moussaoui’s case. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said earlier this month that she probably would reject the government’s request to play the tapes unless prosecutors could demonstrate that they held essential evidence.

“This is a case that involves vast conspiracies to commit mass murder through the intended use of weapons of mass destruction, including hijacked planes,” the prosecutors wrote. “These are the charges that must be proved in this case, and their violent nature does not make the evidence any less relevant or more unfairly prejudicial under the circumstances.”

Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan descent, has denied being a part of the hijacking conspiracy, and his lawyers have stressed that he could not have played a role in the attacks because he had already been in custody for nearly a month on Sept. 11, 2001.

Moussaoui was detained after Minnesota flight school officials became suspicious of him and called the FBI. Moussaoui was detained on immigration charges while authorities investigated his alleged comments about wanting to learn how to fly the “big bird” and other allegedly suspicious activities.

Moussaoui has publicly acknowledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden, admitted to being a member of Al Qaeda and called for the destruction of the U.S. and Jews everywhere. He has insisted on representing himself in his trial--with the help of court-imposed standby counsel. It is one of the few cases in which the government has sought the death penalty for someone charged with conspiring to commit murder, as opposed to committing murder themselves.

The trial in a federal courtroom just outside Washington is expected to start Jan. 6.