Moussaoui schizoid, psychologist testifies

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A clinical psychologist hired by the defense told a federal court jury here Tuesday that admitted terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui is a paranoid schizophrenic who began to lose his ability to reason a decade ago, when he first embraced Muslim extremism in England.

All day the mental health expert from New York testified, describing for the defense his bizarre jailhouse interview with Moussaoui in which the 37-year-old Frenchman talked to himself and spat water at anyone who came near.

“He really wasn’t processing reality very well,” Xavier Amador said. “I came to the conclusion that this looked like a delusion of some kind. He had paranoid schizophrenia.”

But under cross-examination from prosecutors, Amador conceded that he could not say for certain what came first – Moussaoui’s exposure to extremists at the Brixton mosque in London or a family history of schizophrenia that finally appeared in Moussaoui himself.

“Did his illness facilitate his desire to join a hate-filled, paranoid group?” Amador testified. “I don’t know.”

Amador was on the stand for an hour Monday and all of Tuesday. Defense lawyers plan to call another mental health expert today.

Moussaoui pleaded guilty to capital murder last year, and this trial will determine whether he remains in prison for life or is executed. He has testified that he was to pilot a fifth hijacked plane on Sept. 11, 2001.

As the life-or-death sentencing trial nears an end, the final skirmish clearly is shaping up over the state of Moussaoui’s mental capacity.

Moussaoui himself seemed to recognize this Tuesday; when the jury took a break and filed out of the courtroom, he cried out: “Crazy or not crazy, that is the question.”