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American Morning

Attorney Discusses Moussaoui Defense

Aired May 31, 2002 - 08:20   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: On to the story of Zacarias Moussaoui. Is Zacarias Moussaoui mentally fit to defend himself at trial? Well, only his court-appointed psychiatrist may know for sure. The judge is keeping the psychiatric report under seal.

Last month, the so-called 20th hijacker said he wanted to fire his public defenders and go it alone against conspiracy charges that could bring the death penalty.

Now, civil rights attorney Randall Hamud is trying to convince Moussaoui to abandon his plan -- and he joins us now from Washington.

Good morning.

Mr. Hamud, if Mr. Moussaoui has refused to use his court- appointed attorney, why would he even want to talk to you?

RANDALL HAMUD, CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY: Well, the point is I've been retained by his mother in order to talk with him. I bear a letter from his mother introducing me to him. And the hope is, on the mother's part and my part, that he will talk with me and that I'll be able to convince him that it would be foolhardy for him to attempt to represent himself in this very complex case.

It's humanly impossible for him or anyone else to represent himself as a layperson in a case as complex as this. There are over 500 CDs of documents that the government has produced to the defense attorneys so far.

ZAHN: I'm still having trouble understanding if he won't even talk to a court-appointed attorney, what makes you think that he'd even welcome the opportunity to talk with you?

HAMUD: Well, we don't know what's going through his mind now. I think he's showing the effects of long-term incarceration under very odious circumstances, and we're hoping that he will, in fact, be impressed by the letter from his mother that I bear, and that he will want to see me and that I'll be able to convince him to cooperate with a really crackerjack panel of defense lawyers. They're a very committed team. They're very experienced. And they will put up a very strong defense to a very circumstantial case against him.

ZAHN: Now, the -- before we get to what you see as the circumstantial case, the judge presiding over this case basically said she would allow Moussaoui to defend himself if he is found mentally fit to do so. We now understand those medical records are under seal, and you say, given the state of his incarceration, you don't really know what his state of competency is. But what have folks close to him told you about that?

HAMUD: Well, I'm not privy to any information about his competency or the reports regarding his competency. I understand that he has lost a lot of weight, that he looks nothing like the photographs that are depicted of him. And even more importantly, my own clients, when they were incarcerated under similar conditions, started to show effects of the incarceration in shorter periods of time. And he's been over eight months in solitary confinement with a light on his cell 24 hours a day. And his reasoning and his processing of information are just not what they should be.

And he should not be allowed to defend himself. This case is so complex that a panel of seven attorneys are going to have a difficult time gathering and collating the evidence and presenting it in his defense. And he has a very strong defense to a very circumstantial case. Remember, he was in jail on September 11.

ZAHN: Well, let me ask you this: I know you say there's a long line of very competent defense attorneys standing by to represent him if they are allowed to do so. But what do you say to the average American out there who's saying wait a minute, you know, the circumstantial evidence is weak. We know for a fact that this guy paid $8,000 in cash for flying lessons. He expressed this unbelievable notion in interest of the fact that a plane's doors could not be opened in flight. And he wanted to learn how to fly a jumbo jet even though the guys training him said he was a terrible pilot. Don't you understand why that would raise suspicions about this guy?

HAMUD: Not really. A lot of people live out their fantasies with cash to do it with and take flight lessons and play video computer games, and do all sorts of things. It's not criminal conduct per se.

The problem here is he's become a pawn between the Republican administration and the Democratic administration in finger-pointing about September 11, and we're losing sight of the fact that there's a man on trial for his life here and that if the system breaks down relative to Zacarias Moussaoui -- the legal system -- then it breaks down for everybody.

The Constitution guarantees a fair trial. That's all that we're trying to achieve for him. And the denigrating circumstances of his incarceration, the impact on his possible mental state and processing of his information, shouldn't even have come into play here. But yet it has, and you have to fault the government for those odious conditions of incarceration if they're having an impact on his ability to process information and make decisions right now.

ZAHN: All right, very quickly in closing, you say that you think Moussaoui is a political pawn of the Republicans and Democrats. Are you saying, then, that French intelligence officers were lying when they say this guy had clear ties to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden? HAMUD: Well, see, you overspeak, because there's no corroboration of that rumor whatsoever that French intelligence tied him to any organizations whatsoever. The press has been replete with overstatement and hyperbole regarding him, and even in its treatment of my clients when they were under scrutiny. And it turned out none of them was a terrorist or connected in any way whatsoever with any terrorist group or the events of 9/11.

And when the facts are shaken out before a court of law in a just and fair trial here, you're going to find that a lot of this has been nothing more than puff and propaganda relative to this individual.

ZAHN: Somehow...

HAMUD: You've got to look to the facts. You've got to have an arbiter of facts that is fair. You can't try people in the press; otherwise, we might as well just dispose of the trial, and whoever is not popular, today or tomorrow take him out and just hang him. That's not what our Constitution is all about.

ZAHN: Somehow, I don't think those French intelligence officers would characterize their information as hyperbole. But we'd love to have you come back and perhaps debate some of those folks that are very close to that information that came from the French intelligence officials.

Randall Hamud, thank you very much for talking with us here on AMERICAN MORNING.

HAMUD: My pleasure.

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