Inside the Private Agony of Zacarias Moussaoui's Mother

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El-Wafi doesn't withhold the scorn for her son's extremist beliefs, and catalogues her own shame and pain at hearing him mock 9/11 victims. However, she does come to share Moussaoui's suspicion of his lawyers, with whom she ultimately came into conflict after originally agreeing to cooperate, against her son's wishes. At their request, for example, el-Wafi led the legal team for months on what she calls a "Tour de France" in search for people who might stand as character witnesses for the pre-radicalized Moussaoui. Instead, she later discovered, the real purpose was to collect anecdotes and evidence to back up a different defense strategy: to prove that Moussaoui suffered from mental illness resulting from a deprived childhood. And they demanded el-Wafi's help. "You must explain that you never took care of the children, that you botched a part of their upbringing," she writes that one defense lawyer told her. "It's to spare him the death penalty."

El-Wafi was doubly infuriated by the move. While she was certain the harsh prison conditions and isolation had undermined Moussaoui's morale and physical state and troubled his manner of thinking, she was unwilling to call a son who had been lucid during conversations insane — especially lacking any reliable clinical diagnoses. Meanwhile, after all the pain and struggle she'd made on behalf of her children, el-Wafi was shocked at the suggestion of playing the role of the negligent, guilty mother as a ruse. Outraged, she refused to go along with the deprivation and insanity strategy. That, she says, led the lawyers to temporarily shelve that angle while also seeking to keep her away from the trial where she might speak out about the handling of the case. With the aid of a French attorney, she says, the U.S. team agreed to get her access to the trial for a week — although only in a room adjacent to the court, due to lack of space.

Watching the televised proceedings from that room, el-Wafi writes, "I nearly exploded in rage when I saw several free seats." She threatened to take her story to the media and was then granted an accreditation. But inside the courtroom her efforts to show her son some maternal affection and support got little recognition. "He gave me a look heavy with reproach and which seemed to say 'You're here, with those lawyers, and did everything I told you not to,'" she writes. "He turned his head, and didn't give me another look for the rest of the session. His attitude ripped my heart asunder."

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