Moussaoui seeks Muslim land grave

Moussaoui was arrested a month before the US attacks

Admitted terrorist plotter Zacarias Moussaoui has said he wants to be buried in a Muslim land if executed.

Moussaoui asked one of his lawyers to help bring about his wish by recruiting Muslim academic Professor Sadiq Reza.

"I wanted to ask Professor Reza if he could follow up the issue," Moussaoui privately told his trial judge, newly released court papers said.

But two days later in open court he seemed less resigned to dying, saying he would fight the death penalty.

Muslim burial

In the private meeting with Judge Leonie Brinkema on 20 April, he said he understood that pleading guilty to six counts of conspiracy in connection with the 11 September terror attacks was likely to lead to death.

You have a lynch mentality, and you won the prize Zacarias Moussaoui

"I have come to understand that the, the course I've chosen will lead me potentially - you say potentially, I say surely, but it's a matter of opinion - to the gas chamber or the, or the lethal injection," he said.

"I understand this fact. I understand life and death. I had the privilege to be in war. I've seen dead bodies," Moussaoui added.

Moussaoui said that he wanted assistance in ensuring his burial in a Muslim land, otherwise "I will be buried in Arkansas or they don't give a damn where".

Mental competence

One of Moussaoui's attorneys, Alan Yamamoto, and a court reporter also attended the meeting.

"You are not in charge of my life. You are in charge of my death," the al-Qaeda member told Ms Brinkema.

The US authorities say they will be seeking the death penalty

"You have a lynch mentality, and you won the prize. You catch the beast, you have the feather and the tar, and you are going to have the party," Moussaoui added.

The meeting was held to check whether he was mentally competent to plead guilty on six charges, four of which carry the death sentence, related to the 11 September 2001 attacks.

His lawyers had attempted to prevent him pleading guilty, saying he was mentally unfit to do so.

However, the judge ruled that he was and on 22 April Moussaoui entered a guilty plea.

Hand-picked for attack

He is the only person in the US ever charged over the attacks in Washington and New York, but Moussaoui maintains he was not part of the 9/11 plot itself, but a wider conspiracy to attack the White House.

Moussaoui said he had been personally chosen by Osama Bin Laden in a plot to crash planes into US buildings.

"I was being trained on a 747 to eventually use this plane to strike the White House," he said.

He was arrested a month before the attacks - in which nearly 3,000 people died - on immigration charges, after a flying school in Minnesota reported that he had been acting suspiciously.