Zacarias Moussaoui is one of those people who wanted to change the world in a hurry.
Moussaoui was arrested before the notorious Sept. 11 attacks on the United States when he confided to his trainer that he wanted to learn how to take off, but not how to land. It is suspected that he was to have been the 20th man involved in the hijacking of US planes on that terrible day.
At the initial stage of the trial, Moussaoui said he did not want to seek help from the US law. However, at the end of the trial, he relented and announced his willingness to plead guilty with the hope that his punishment might become lighter or, at the least, he might be spared the lethal injection, the maximum punishment.
He did that after he read a few passages from the American law and learned that the charges brought against him by the US authorities could get him capital punishment. He also read that pleading guilty was a way to escape the maximum punishment.
That might have been the reason why he told the judge that he wanted to plead guilty. He declared that he was a member of the Al-Qaeda gang that carried out the Sept. 11 operations against the United States.
The woman judge tried to stop him saying anything that might be held against him later. But, ignoring her warnings, he went on enumerating his crimes on the naïve assumption that the severity of his punishment would be mitigated. She again advised him to keep quiet because his statements would be held against him. Confession of guilt, in all cases, did not mean that the one who makes the plea would be spared capital punishment.
After reading a few pages of some law books, Moussaoui came to believe that he had learned enough of the American law to defend himself in the case against him. The poor man might have believed that an issue of this enormity could be handled as easily as seen in some films.
In the early stages of his trial, his mother, Mrs. Aicha El-Wafi, started weeping and said that he was a good boy but had fallen under the spell of some terrible people who brought about some radical changes in him. In fact, it was quite evident that Moussaoui was like several other young people who had made a hurried attempt to understand religion, international politics and law. They could not wait a few more days to learn more before setting out to change the world, making it very simple for those who wanted to make them their tools in carrying out some extremely dangerous assignments.
It is their gullibility, ignorance and lack of experience that made these young men easy preys to those who had schemed to exploit them. In Moussaoui’s case, the transformation in thinking and attitudes occurred in less than two years. He believed that in that short period he had learned everything about Islam, secrets of flying an aircraft and American law. In fact, he is a victim of the cunning manipulations of those exploited him, circumstances and his own youthful age.
