Gov't Concedes No Moussaoui-Reid Evidence (shoe bomber)

:silly:

man? Does America need revenge that bad?

THE US government has admitted overnight that there was no evidence to back Zacarias Moussaoui's dramatic courtroom confession that he was to have been a key player in the September 11 attacks. The revelation, at the Al-Qaeda plotter's death penalty trial, undercut Moussaoui's claim that he and British shoe bomber Richard Reid were to have hit the White House with a fifth hijacked jet in the 2001 attacks.

It came on the final day of evidence in the gruelling, emotional trial, before jurors will be handed the task Monday of deciding whether Moussaoui should be put to death over the strikes, which killed nearly 3,000 people. Prosecutors meanwhile targeted defence claims the Frenchman was a paranoid schizophrenic, suffering from delusions, calling a forensic psychiatrist who denied he was mentally ill.

The defence also dipped into the well of pain left by the 2001 attacks in a bid to blunt harrowing prosecution testimony from other grief-stricken relatives and tapes and pictures of the horror of September 11. Information on Reid was contained in a stipulation agreed between defence and prosecution, and read out in court by defence lawyer Alan Yamamoto.

"To date, there is no information available to indicate that Richard Reid had pre-knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, or was instructed by the Al-Qaeda leadership to conduct an operation in coordination with Moussaoui," the document
said. The statement said that while the 19 September 11 hijackers were in the United States before the attacks, Reid was travelling between Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Netherlands, Israel and Turkey. "It is highly unlikely that Reid was part of this operation," the declaration said attributing the comment to two unnamed FBI analysts. The document also said Reid left his personal effects in a will to Moussaoui, whom he met in Afghanistan, further undermining Moussaoui's claim of a planned joint attack.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au