Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man ever convicted in the US for his role in 11 September, 2001, terrorist attacks has now announced that he renounces terrorism, Al-Qaeda and Daesh.
Currently serving a life sentence at a federal prison in Colorado, having escaped the death penalty in his 2006 trial, Moussaoui also denounced Al-Qaeda’s late leader Osama Bin Laden in a hand-written court motion, which he filed with a federal court last month.
“I denounce, repudiate Osama Bin Laden as a useful idiot of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)/Saudi. I also proclaim unequivocally my opposition to any terrorist action, attack, propaganda against the US,” Moussaoui wrote.
He also hopes: “To warn young Muslims against the deception and the manipulation of these fake jihadis.”
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The Associated Press reported that Katherine Donahue, who wrote a book about Moussaoui after attending his 2006 trial, claimed she was unaware of any other instance in which he had renounced terrorism or Bin Laden. “He’s been [in prison] 14 years. It’s a long time to think about what you’ve done,” Donahue stated. “I don’t see him lying. There were so many ways he could have helped himself before by lying.”
Moussaoui’s renunciation is part of his petition in seeking relaxation of the conditions under which he currently serves his sentence. In 2015, he also claimed that Al-Qaeda received support from some of the most senior members of the Saudi royal family.
The CIA’s Operation Cyclone armed and financed the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets, running from 1979 to 1989. A forerunner to Al-Qaeda, Bin Laden’s organisation the Maktab-Al-Khidamat (MAK) which recruited and facilitated foreign, mostly Arab, fighters to assist the mujahideen, was supported by Pakistani intelligence and also served as a conduit for the CIA to conduct its covert war against the Soviet occupation amid the wider Cold War conflict. Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in a 2011 US Special Forces raid on his compound, close to a military academy.
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