US Interdicts First Terror Suspect

WASHINGTON, Tuesday - In the first charges involving the September 11 attacks, Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, was indicted on Tuesday for conspiring with Osama bin Laden, 19 hijackers and others to murder thousands of people, U.S. officials said. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the six-count indictment three months after hijacked planes hit the Pentagon and New York’s World Trade Center. A fourth hijacked jet crashed in Pennsylvania before it could attack any other American landmark. Almost 3,300 people died in the attacks. Moussaoui, 33, who faces a possible death sentence, will be tried in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, not in a military tribunal that has been proposed by President George W. Bush for foreigners involved in the attacks. Ashcroft said a grand jury in Virginia returned the indictment against Moussaoui on charges of “conspiring with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to murder thousands of innocent people in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania on September 11.” Reuter Ends