US: A psychologist who examined Zacarias Moussaoui has told a court that the convicted terrorist is a paranoid schizophrenic who is convinced that president George Bush will pardon him and release him from jail.
Xavier Amador was testifying for the defence before a jury that must decide if Moussaoui, who has admitted to conspiring with other members of al-Qaeda to carry out terrorist attacks after September 11th, 2001, should receive the death penalty.
The psychologist said that Moussaoui spat water at him 15 times during a one-hour interview in jail last year.
"He really wasn't processing reality very well. I came to the conclusion that this looked like a delusion of some kind. He had paranoid schizophrenia," Mr Amador said.
The psychologist said that Moussaoui is convinced that Mr Bush will release him regardless of the outcome of the current trial. "He really believes it. He believes it with 100 per cent absolute conviction."
Mr Amador said Moussaoui sits apart from his lawyers in court because of a "psychotic" belief that the lawyers will trick the marshals who guard the court into thinking he is attacking them and they will kill him.
Moussaoui mocked the psychologist's testimony, saying, "Crazy or not crazy, that is the question" and joking about his "beautiful terrorist mind", apparently a reference to the film A Beautiful Mind about a mathematician who suffers from schizophrenia.
Moussaoui has claimed in the past that all Americans, including his own lawyers, want to kill him. Defence lawyers claim the 37-year-old French citizen is delusional and should be sentenced to life in prison rather than to death.
Earlier, the court heard video-taped evidence from Moussaoui's sister Nadia that their alcoholic father had terrorised them as children and that Moussaoui had been "the little sweetheart" of the family.
"I think he was capable of something good . . . We were going to vanquish with the power of love: it was Zacarias who spoke like that," she said.
The court has heard evidence from relatives of the victims of the September 11th, 2001, attacks who want Moussaoui to be executed. Today, the defence will call other victims' relatives who want his life to be spared.