The Trial

The peerless Dahlia Lithwick:

The participants in this case now seem to agree on several key points: Even the government concedes that Moussaoui was not meant to be the "20th hijacker." He was probably too unstable even to participate formally in the Sept. 11 plot. (Indeed, the latest military report from Guantanamo lists a detainee there—a Saudi man named Mohamed al-Kahtani—as the "probable 20th 9/11 hijacker".) Still, both sides apparently agree that Moussaoui is a card-carrying Osama Bin Laden fan who would have liked to kill some Americans himself given the chance. Everyone also appears to agree that Moussaoui should be eligible for the death penalty. Even though no one is certain what he's done to earn it. Can they really kill you just for belonging to al-Qaida, if you have no specific ties to any plot or conspiracy? Will the Justice Department and Judge Brinkema simply stuff their fists into their ears to avoid hearing Moussaoui plead guilty to crimes he could not have committed, in light of the story he has told for the past three years—a sort of modified plea bargain in which the government ignores the legal nuance in order to score the execution?

Unless he's about to change his story (again) and cop to having known intimately about Sept. 11, this guilty plea and Moussaoui's willingness to accept being eligible for the death penalty are the outcome of the circular logic that has pervaded the prosecution's case from the outset. Moussaoui must die because this was intended to be the big 9/11 show trial that would end in an execution. Somehow, even if he's the wrong guy being executed for the wrong conspiracy, this case will prove to the world that the American court system really works.