At least that's what his defense argued today.
Zacarias Moussaoui has entered a guilty plea for charges of conspiring to hijack planes and crash them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A jury is now deciding his sentence: the death penalty or life in prison. In his trial today his defense counsel presented evidence that Moussaoui is a paranoid schizophrenic.
From the Chicago Tribune:
"[Defense psychologist Xavier] Amador diagnosed the 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent as a paranoid schizophrenic after observing his actions and writings since 2002. [Defense attorney Gerald] Zerkin led him through a listing of Moussaoui's erratic, often contradictory behavior and strongly held paranoid and delusional beliefs. Amador said these included:
- Moussaoui's conviction that President Bush will free him.
- His belief that if he sat with defense lawyers they would pretend he was attacking them so marshals would kill him.
- His claim that the FBI bugged his electric fan before he was arrested and knew all about the plans for the Sept. 11 attack and that he could clear up the mysteries of that attack if only he could tell that story in court.
- His demand for a Muslim lawyer, later dropped and then renewed.
- His insistence that he had nothing to do with 9/11 and his later claim that he was to hijack a fifth jetliner that day and fly it into the White House.
- His early effort to plead guilty and ask for the death penalty and his later vow to fight execution.
- His demand that defense lawyers stop filing motions because filing them violated his religion, followed by the dozens of motions he filed himself."
Does all this make him a paranoid schizophrenic? I don't know but I do know that grouping the only person currently charged with the September 11th attacks in with the mentally ill community isn't going to do much in helping fight stigma.
Read more articles about today's events in the Moussaoui trial:
