Moussaoui 'was a poor pilot'

2006-03-09 22:36

Stephen Collinson

Aelandria - A jury heard that Zacarias Moussaoui was a poor pilot who failed to obtain a license despite hours of training, as the al-Qaeda conspirator's death penalty trial resumed here Thursday.

The US commission which investigated the September 11 attacks concluded that Frenchman Moussaoui was ordered to undergo flight training in late 2000 by 9/11 mastermind Khaled Sheikh Mohammed.

Moussaoui is the first person tried in the United States in connection with the 9/11 attacks, which killed nearly 3 000 people, and he has admitted conspiring to fly planes into US buildings for al-Qaeda.

The prosecution must prove that acts by Moussaoui directly contributed to deaths on September 11 for him to be eligible for the death penalty.

If jurors unanimously agree he is, they will be asked to consider recommending capital punishment.

The alternative sentence is life in prison, without possibility of parole.

Prosecutors on Thursday called as a witness Moussaoui's flight instructor, Shohaib Nazir Kassam, from a flight school in Oklahoma.

The instructor spent 50 hours teaching Moussaoui to fly a small single-engine plane in mid-2001.

Kassam said that Moussaoui, whom he called Zack, was unusual in that he had failed to fly solo after 50 hours in the air.

Moussaoui was "not a very good pilot, not the best student, just below average", the instructor said.

"He couldn't maintain basic control most of the time."

>b>'Big bird'

The instructor said that he stopped teaching Moussaoui in May 2001 and that Moussaoui subsequently left the flight school without qualifying for a private pilot's license.

The jury also heard excerpts from e-mails Moussaoui sent to flight simulator schools in the United States in 2001 inquiring how he could learn to fly a "big bird" like a 747.

Moussaoui eventually paid $6 800 to the PanAm Flight Academy in Minnesota.

His ground instructor at the school, Clarence Prevost, testified that he thought Moussaoui's presence there was strange as he did not even have a flying license; most students at the school were professional pilots with thousands of hours' experience.

Prevost said he thought that Moussaoui "was a guy that had too much money, like people with too much money go to Major League training camps ... I thought that he was fulfilling a dream".

Prosecutors are trying to show that Moussaoui's actions are similar to those of the September 11 hijackers who learnt to fly in the United States.

The defence has countered that Moussaoui was a loner rejected by "the real terrorists" and was useless to al-Qaeda as he was unable to pilot even the simplest of planes.

- AFP