September 11 conspirator loses U.S. court appeal

Zacarias Moussaoui is shown in an undated police photograph.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in a U.S. court on criminal charges related to the September 11, 2001, attacks, lost a bid on Monday to overturn his guilty plea and his sentence of life in prison.

A U.S. appeals court rejected arguments by Moussaoui, who is serving his sentence at a supermaximum federal security prison in Colorado, that his guilty plea was invalid because the U.S. government failed to turn over classified evidence that could have helped in his defense.

"Moussaoui challenges the validity of his guilty plea and his sentences" on the six criminal conspiracy counts, the appeals court said in its ruling. "We affirm Moussaoui's convictions and sentences in their entirety."

The ruling occurred at a time of growing political debate over whether terrorism suspects should be tried in the regular U.S. court system or in special military tribunals.

Some Republicans have criticized the Obama administration's decision to try in federal court in Michigan a Nigerian man accused of attempting to blow up a U.S. passenger jet on Christmas Day.

They also have opposed the administration's decision to send the accused mastermind of the September 11 attacks and four alleged co-conspirators for trial in federal court in New York. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the others currently are at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, pleaded guilty in 2005 to taking part in an al Qaeda conspiracy to crash hijacked planes into U.S. buildings. The conspiracy included the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.

In 2006, a federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia, sentenced Moussaoui to life in prison, rejecting demands by prosecutors that he get the death penalty.

Moussaoui testified at his trial that he was supposed to hijack a fifth plane and crash it into the White House. He was arrested several weeks before the September 11 attacks after raising suspicions at a Minnesota flight school.

ARGUMENTS REJECTED

A three-judge panel of a U.S. appeals court based in Richmond, Virginia, rejected arguments by Moussaoui's lawyers that his conviction should be retried or he be resentenced because his constitutional rights had been violated.

His attorneys had argued in the appeal that Moussaoui's trial preparations had been impaired because his lawyers could not tell him about classified evidence the government had that could have helped his case.

His attorneys said Moussaoui had a fundamentally unfair trial and raised various other arguments, including that his choice of lawyer had been rejected.

But U.S. Justice Department attorneys said U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who presided over the trial, made sure that Moussaoui understood his rights.

They said Moussaoui wanted to plead guilty, against the advice of his lawyers, and that he knew the gist of the classified evidence in question.

The court also rejected a request by Moussaoui to send the case back to Brinkema for further proceedings based on the government's disclosure of classified information about CIA interrogations of terrorism suspects while his appeal has been pending.

"The finality of the guilty plea, entered knowingly, intelligently, and with sufficient awareness of the relevant circumstances and likely consequences, stands," the appeals court concluded at the end of a 78-page opinion.

(Additional reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky, Editing by David Alexander and Eric Beech)