Government opposes request to release motions in Moussaoui case
By The Associated Press
09.20.02
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The government is asking a judge to reject a request by news organizations to publicly release motions by accused Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.
The motions contain racial slurs, threats, calls to action — and possibly coded messages to al-Qaida operatives, prosecutors said yesterday. They should not be treated as normal court motions that typically would be available to the public, the government said.
Moussaoui's filings had been made public by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema before she ran out of patience with his repeated attacks on her, the court-appointed lawyers and Jews. She issued an order Aug. 29 that has kept 25 motions secret, although she released a pleading on Sept. 18 after concluding Moussaoui had cleaned up his language sufficiently.
Moussaoui is charged with conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers to commit terrorism and prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty if he's convicted. The 34-year-old French citizen is representing himself, although the judge has asked the court-appointed team to assist him.
If the judge granted the news media request, the government added, a 30-day period would be needed to review Moussaoui's filings to eliminate coded messages and offensive language. The news organizations have asked for a 10-day review.
Moussaoui has admitted his loyalty to al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden but denied conspiring with the 19 Sept. 11 suicide attackers.
Prosecutors said the 25 nonpublic motions should remain under seal, along with future pleadings that abuse the court's standards.
"The defendant cannot be allowed simply to put a caption on his messages to other al-Qaida members, file them with the court and thereby broadcast them to the world," the prosecutors said.
Moussaoui also uses the pleadings to circumvent his strict conditions of confinement that bar communications with the outside world, the government contends, adding that coded messages are sometimes difficult to identify.
Arguing that the order was too broad and violated the First Amendment, the news organizations said "the press and public have both the constitutional and common-law right to access his pleadings except where compelling interests required otherwise."
The organizations involved are the Associated Press, ABC, CBS, CNN, the Tribune Company, USA TODAY, The Washington Post and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.