ALEXANDRIA, Va. - On June 13, 2002, after months of disputes with his court-appointed lawyers and questions about his mental competency, Zacarias Moussaoui persuaded U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema that he was lucid, smart and entirely capable of representing himself.
Finally permitted to act as his own lawyer, Moussaoui proceeded to insist on filing an oral emergency motion for his immediate release, laying out pieces of a bizarre scenario in which an old address he occupied in London could reveal that the government knew about the Sept. 11 plot and allowed it.
"This address will," Moussaoui explained to the judge, "might see me leaving the jail today if I will be given an opportunity to explain the significance of this address."
Almost four years later, Moussaoui remains in jail, and he long ago lost the right to represent himself. But as jurors in his death penalty trial here prepare to begin deliberations tomorrow on whether he should be executed, Moussaoui's mind - part florid propagandist, part devout Islamic fundamentalist, part brazen jihadist, and part byzantine legal strategist - has continued to envelop attempts to make sense of his case like a species of kudzu.
In two riveting and largely self-incriminating appearances on the stand, he embraced Sept. 11, mocked victims, and made his credibility central to the government's case for killing him while claiming he wants to live. He has done it with an overdose of hostility and such a mix of taunts, dreams and theological assertions that discerning his real objectives is a challenge even for experts.
"I appreciate the complexity of Moussaoui," noted Dr. Michael Welner, a New York forensic psychiatrist. "His hostility may be partly contrived, not at all contrived, or completely contrived."
Erratic behavior has long been a feature of Moussaoui's case. The 37-year-old French-Moroccan al-Qaida operative, arrested 25 days before Sept. 11, first offered to plead guilty in 2002, changed his mind, then decided again to plead guilty last year. He denied a role in Sept. 11, then at trial said he had planned to pilot a fifth hijacked jet.
Bitter testimony
Before pleading guilty last year, he told Brinkema he wanted to plead for the death penalty, then pledged to fight it "every inch" when he appeared in court - only to apparently invite it by rejoicing in victims' suffering when he testified. Instead of the obscure London address, he told jurors he is now banking on a dream in which President George W. Bush releases him, perhaps in a hostage trade.
Last week, dueling experts took the stand to disagree about what's going on in Moussaoui's head. Testifying for the defense, a psychiatrist and a psychologist said he was a paranoid schizophrenic - citing persistent "delusions" that Bush will free him and that his lawyers are out to kill him, constant flip-flops and dozens of nearly incoherent pleadings he filed in late 2003.
Psychologist Xavier Amador compared Moussaoui's thinking to a film. "His movie is like someone cut up the filmstrip and scattered all the pieces on the table."
In response, prosecution expert Dr. Raymond Patterson, a forensic psychiatrist, testified that Moussaoui was just "a character" who might have a personality disorder, but was not schizophrenic. Patterson said belief in dreams was an Islamic tenet, not a delusion, and Moussaoui had strategic conflicts with his lawyers that he articulated in exaggerated language.
The rest of his behavior, Patterson said, reflected a man cooped up in isolation, manipulating the legal system to propagandize his terrorist cause and his view of Islam. "He continues to fight this war by any means available, and the means available to him are his words, his writings and his interactions," Patterson said.
For jurors, the expert diagnoses may not be as important as what they saw with their own eyes - Moussaoui's two dramatic appearances on the witness stand. He seemed quick, clear-headed and determined - a point Patterson made repeatedly - as he laughed off claims that he is crazy, took credit for Sept. 11 and reveled in its carnage.
Still a mystery
That testimony has become the centerpiece of a second debate about what's actually going on with Moussaoui. Did he lie to make himself as villainous as possible in a bid for political martyrdom? Or was it the blunt honesty of a man who has decided to trust his God to save him?
Moussaoui himself told jurors he thought they would show respect to him as a soldier for being forthright and that even the most "revengeful" juror might decide to spare him as a bargaining chip in a future hostage trade. "I know that by testifying truthfully, I will save my life," he said. "It's an act of religion."
Welner, who is conducting public surveys on a Web site called depravityscale.org to help refine legal standards for identifying the most heinous crimes, says Moussaoui's in-your-face insults to victims represent the most extreme example he's encountered of unrepentant testimony. But he doesn't think Moussaoui is crazy, or seeking martyrdom.
Instead, he believes Moussaoui may have a rational plan to live, linked to his dream of getting released by Bush: To show a defiance that will increase his stature among radicals in hope they will take action to free him. "His frame of reference isn't the United States, it's global," said Welner.
That resembles prosecutors' views. Even they conceded last week that part of Moussaoui's story - that shoe bomber Richard Reid was going to help him hijack a plane Sept. 11 - was false. That fits more with the defense view that Moussaoui is lying to seek martyrdom.
In fact, Moussaoui's insistence that he is not trying to be a martyr may be more a theological distinction than a real one, notes Richard Bulliet, a Columbia University professor of Islamic history. In Islam, it would be inappropriate to "seek" a martyr status that only God grants, he says. Instead, Moussaoui would try to pursue his anti-U.S. jihad with a "pure intent," leaving the rest to God - and would feel free to tell a few lies about his actual role in Sept. 11 in the process.
"He is going to articulate what his intent is or was," Bulliet said. "The empirical details would strike him as unimportant."
