Surprise Witness Throws Trial of 9/11 Suspect Into Turmoil
By Geir Moulson
The Associated Press
Friday, January 30, 2004; 4:25 PM
HAMBURG, Germany -- A surprise witness Friday countered evidence used in the trial of a Moroccan man accused of helping the Sept. 11 hijackers.
The last-minute witness, who claimed to be a former Iranian intelligence agent who also worked for the CIA, told the court that Abdelghani Mzoudi not only helped but was directly involved in the plot.
German intelligence, however, delivered a scathing assessment of the credibility of the witness.
Mzoudi faces more than 3,000 counts of being an accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization for allegedly helping suicide hijackers Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah.
In December, the Hamburg state court released Mzoudi for the duration of his trial based on evidence that suggested he knew nothing of his friends' plans to attack the United States.
But Friday's witness, who would only identify himself by the alias Hamid Reza Zakeri, testified that Mzoudi, 31, was behind the logistical planning of the attacks.
"I know from my source that in the Sept. 11 incident he was al Qaeda's middleman for receiving codes," Zakeri said during three hours of rambling and sometimes evasive testimony.
Zakeri said Mzoudi spent three months in 1997 learning codes at an al Qaeda camp in Iran. He said he first learned of Mzoudi in an e-mail from his source in October.
Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, however, cast serious doubt on Zakeri's credibility.
While Zakeri probably is a former Iranian agent, "the value of his information is very low," the agency said in a statement read by the judge.
The agency, which received "unsubstantiated information" from Zakeri on other issues in 2002 and 2003, has "the impression that he presents himself as a witness on any theme which can bring him benefit," it added.
Presiding Judge Klaus Ruehle repeatedly pressed Zakeri for information on his source.
But the bearded man with dark, curly hair and glasses who spoke quietly through an interpreter would only say the source was a "very prominent" person in Iran.
Zakeri said he agreed to work for the CIA in 1992. He left Iran in July 2001 when, he said, he tried to warn U.S. authorities that something was planned against the United States or Israel for Sept. 10. He said he was not taken seriously. He alleged there had been two meetings in early 2001 between senior al Qaeda figures and Iranian leaders.
Zakeri's testimony prompted the court to delay a verdict until Thursday. It was originally scheduled for last week.
Mzoudi's attorneys renewed their call for his acquittal, with defense lawyer Guel Pinar saying "the witness was telling fairy tales."
Chief prosecutor Walter Hemberger conceded Zakeri was a flawed witness, but told the court that "if you believe as we do that the defendant is guilty, some things he said fit into the picture."
He called for the maximum 15-year sentence -- the same given nearly a year ago to Mzoudi's friend, Mounir el Motassadeq, on identical charges.
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Supply-Side Swiss
By Joshua Livestro Published 01/27/2004
TCS
In a recent contribution to National Review Online, Jerry Bowyer attacked the Bush tax cuts package for not doing enough to lower the tax burden of the rich. If the reality of the tax cuts had lived up to the rhetoric of its opponents, Bowyer explains, the economic recovery would have taken off much quicker and much more strongly than it did: "It wasn't until May of last year, when 'the rich' were dealt into the game, that the weak recovery strengthened."
Articles like that are bound to get on the nerves of those who share the sentiments of the 1970s British Labour Party Chancellor Denis Healy, who famously claimed that the purpose of any income tax system should be to "squeeze the rich till the pips squeak." But if this is enough to get them worked up, what would they make of the recently implemented reform of personal income tax in the Swiss canton of Schaffhausen? Because towards the end of last year, the local Parliament there decided to introduce a new income tax that has as its cornerstone the principle of regression. In other words: the more money you make, the less tax you pay. As of the first of January 2004, in the canton of Schaffhausen, it actually pays to get rich.
Instead of flying into a Howard Dean-like rage, though, tax addicts would do well to consider the merits of the Schaffhausen measures before rejecting them in a knee-jerk fashion. No sane person, after all, could oppose a system of taxation that is morally sound and economically efficient -- which is precisely what these measures are all about. The morality of it is easy enough to explain. It is after all fairly widely accepted that working hard and saving for a rainy day both constitute morally good behavior. Any tax system that claims to have its basis in morality would therefore have to encourage precisely those activities. Whatever else they might like to say about it, the taxaholics would have to admit that the Schaffhausen income tax does exactly that -- and does it in spades. Who wouldn't want to go out and work, work, work, if every extra Swiss Franc earned will be taxed less than the previous one?
The economic case for a regressive system of income tax is linked to the moral case for it. It is a case first made by the American economist Arthur Laffer. Laffer shot to fame in the early 1980s, when, as a member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board, his Laffer Curve theory (developed in the early 1970s) provided the public justification of the Reagan tax cuts. The basis of his theory was that a high tax rate might in fact lead to lower government revenues than a lower tax rate because of a flight of capital and labor into the black economy. Whereas punitive rates of taxation encourage tax evasion, substantially lower rates could actually have the opposite effect of tempting people back into the official economy. Ironically (or as libertarians might say, perversely) lower rates could thus lead to an increase in government revenues. According to Laffer's theory, a sufficiently large tax cut would almost certainly be self-financing.
Laffer was proved right in spectacular fashion in the 1980s when Reagan's radical tax-cutting measures led to one of the longest sustained economic booms in American history, with rising private and corporate incomes also leading to higher tax receipts. That didn't stop left-wing academics from castigating Laffer's ideas, claiming they were anything from ridiculous to immoral. The mere fact that they were actually right didn't seem to bother them much. But as Bruce Bartlett observed in a recent column on Townhall.com, academia has gradually come round to Laffer's position, in turn convincing policy makers in institutions like the IMF and the World Bank that supply-side tax policies might hold the key to the economic development of the world's poorest nations.
And what works in Pakistan or Southern Africa will certainly work in Schaffhausen. The local administrators in Schaffhausen are not just optimistic about this, they're banking on it. Unafraid to count their chickens before they are hatched, they are confidently predicting that the new income tax will lead to new streams of revenue for the canton. They have even gone so far as to express the hope that high earners would be tempted to relocate to Schaffhausen. So if you're traveling through Switzerland this summer, don't be surprised if you come across a road sign saying "You are entering Schaffhausen. Millionaires welcome here."