The lawyer and fiancee of the man known as Carlos the Jackal said today that she will represent Zacarias Moussaoui, the French citizen indicted for conspiracy in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Paris lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre said she would defend Moussaoui's rights as a French citizen, such as trying to protect him from the possibility of the death penalty, which France opposes.
Moussaoui, a 33-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent now in U.S. custody, was named Tuesday by a federal grand jury in the first indictment directly linked to the suicide hijackings. He was charged with six felonies, including four that carry the death penalty.
``I am a French lawyer, he is French. So I am going to do everything in my power to ensure his rights as a French citizen,'' Coutant-Peyre said in a telephone interview. Moussaoui already has a lawyer in the United States.
Coutant-Peyre said Moussaoui's mother, Aicha, asked her to represent her son.
Two months ago, Coutant-Peyre said she would marry Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, who is serving a life sentence in France for the 1975 murders of two French secret agents and an alleged informer. The Venezuelan-born Ramirez, who was arrested in Sudan in 1994, is also under investigation for three terrorist attacks in the 1980s.
A Muslim convert, Ramirez recently told the France Soir newspaper that he felt ``relief'' at the Sept. 11 attacks. In 1998, Ramirez told France Soir that he wished good luck to Osama bin Laden, who had been indicted for the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
Coutant-Peyre said she hoped Moussaoui will be brought back to France. She said she has not yet spoken with Moussaoui, nor does she know where he is being held.
Coutant-Peyre suggested Moussaoui has been made a scapegoat.
``There is, in the end, a big manipulation to designate him as one of those responsible for what happened on Sept. 11,'' she said.
``It is normal, of course, that the American authorities are charged with looking for those responsible for what happened - but not to find a public scapegoat.''
The French government said yesterday that it would object to the death penalty for Moussaoui, and Justice Minister Marylise Lebranchu said France would provide him consular protection - meaning it would work to assure he has a fair trial according to French standards.
In other news, the U.S. Navy shot down TWA Flight 800, the Rumsfeld Cabal arranged the attack on the World Trade Center in concert with Mossad agents, the Pentagon was not hit by an airplane, and the Israeli Embassy in Paris simply burned to the ground as a result of spontaneous conjunction.
Just in--Chirac has surrendered to an audiotape of Osama bin Laden.