The only person convicted in a U.S. court in the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States claims he is renouncing terrorism, al-Qaida and its dead leader, Osama bin Laden.
“I denounce, repudiate Osama bin Laden as a useful idiot of the CIA/Saudi. I also proclaim unequivocally my opposition to any terrorist action, attack, propaganda against the U.S,” Zacarias Moussaoui wrote in a note to a federal court in Virginia last month.
He also said he wants to “warn young Muslim against the deception and the manipulation of these fake Jihadis.”
Moussaoui is petitioning the court to allow some of the special rules under which he is serving his life sentence to be relaxed. He is in a maximum-security prison in Colorado.
Moussaoui wants to be able to testify at the trial of a civil lawsuit filed by some September 11th victims and said he wants Rudy Giuliani or Alan Dershowitz to represent him.
He also reached out to the American Civil Liberties Union, but prison authorities have not released its reply.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who presided over Moussaoui’s 2006 terror trial, rejected his petition, saying that if he has a complaint about his treatment in prison, he has to file in Colorado.
“Raising these issues with this Court is an act of futility,” Brinkema wrote.
Moussaoui is appealing her decision.
Moussaoui served as his own attorney during his trial. He was openly defiant, insulted the judge, and declared, “God save Osama bin Laden. You'll never get him,” before he was taken away.
U.S. forces hunted down and killed bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011.
Prosecutors could not prove Moussaoui was the so-called 20th hijacker, among those who trained to hijack a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center or Pentagon, but said as a member of al-Qaida, he knew about the plot and failed to do anything to stop it.