- MONTPELLIER, France -- The
mother of Zacarias Moussaoui, the Frenchman who pleaded guilty to US charges
that he took part in Al-Qaeda's Sept. 11 conspiracy, said yesterday her
son had been made a "scapegoat".
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- "My son pleaded guilty, but I don't understand why,"
Aicha El-Wafi told a press conference in the southern French city of Montpellier.
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- "American prosecutors need a guilty party. The American
government says that Islamists want blood, but they want to kill my son
and so they're doing the same thing because he's an Arab," she said.
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- "My son has been made a scapegoat," she added,
however noting that she wants "to believe in the American justice
system".
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- Wafi called on the French government to intervene on
Moussaoui's behalf, but a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry said Paris
could neither "intervene nor interfere" in the US court proceedings.
-
- Moussaoui, a 36-year-old French national of Moroccan
descent, on Friday pleaded guilty to six conspiracy charges linked to the
Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000
people.
-
- But he has also insisted that he was not to be one of
the Sept. 11 hijackers and that he was to take part in a later attack on
the White House.
-
- Moussaoui admitted conspiracy to commit terrorism, to
commit aircraft piracy, to destroy aircraft and to use weapons of mass
destruction -- charges which carry the death penalty. He also pleaded guilty
in the US federal court to conspiracy to murder and to destroy property.
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- He is the first person to face US charges over the attacks.
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- "France has something to say here, as this is not
some immigrant, he was born in France. I don't see any way out unless France
does something. It has something to say, even if its inquiry didn't turn
up anything," El-Wafi said.
-
- But later, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Cecile Pozzo
di Borgo countered: "The French authorities reiterate that they can
neither intervene nor interfere in ongoing judicial proceedings, whether
abroad or in France."
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- The spokeswoman said French consular officials were attending
Moussaoui's hearings in the Alexandria, Virginia court and following the
case closely.
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- "My son was arrested on Aug. 16, 2001 because his
papers weren't in order, and on Sept. 13 they said he was the 20th man
in the Sept. 11th attacks, but the 20th man is in Guantanamo," Wafi
said, referring to the US military detention center at Guantanamo Bay.
-
- "He took flying lessons but he always said that
he had nothing to do with Sept. 11. They can't pin this on him," she
told reporters.
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- Moussaoui is the first Al-Qaeda conspirator to appear
in a US civilian court over the Sept. 11 attacks. The others remain in
US military custody.
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- Denouncing her son's prison conditions, Wafi said: "I
don't know what's in his head. He's sick of it all, he can't take it anymore
and he decided to end it, one way or another."
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- http://www.aljazeerah.info/April%202
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