Paris has warned Washington it could review its cooperation...

Paris has warned Washington it could review its cooperation with the September 11 probe if the United States sought the death penalty against a French national charged with aiding the people behind the attacks, French rights groups said.
They said Justice Minister Marylise Lebranchu told them in a letter that she had instructed her officials to contact the U.S. Justice Department to voice concern that information gleaned in France could put Zacarias Moussaoui on death row.
The 33-year-old is charged with conspiring with Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network in connection with the hijacked airliner attacks in New York and Washington, which left more than 3,000 people dead in September 2001.
After reaching an agreement with the French government, U.S. prosecutor Robert Spencer attempted to interview Moussaoui's relatives in France.
"France will take steps to alter the agreement stipulating that any information transmitted to the U.S. judicial authorities... cannot be used by prosecutors pressing for a death penalty," rights groups, including Amnesty International, quoted Lebranchu's March 15 letter as saying.
Rights groups say Spencer, who questioned Moussaoui's brother, would use the information to argue the suspect should be put to death.
Moussaoui's brother refused to answer Spencer's questions while his mother failed to turn up for an interview. Four of the six charges for which a not guilty plea has been entered on Moussaoui's behalf carry a possible death penalty.
Lebranchu has already said France, which scrapped capital punishment in 1981, would not accept the death penalty for Moussaoui. (Sources: Reuters, 19/03/2002) dicong dicpolJanuary 3, 2002: for the first time since his December 11, 2001 indictment on charges of conspiring to help kill thousands of people on Sept. 11, 2001 suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui addressed the federal judge who will be presiding over his trial later in 2002 and pleaded not guilty.
"In the name of Allah, I do not have anything to plead," the 33-year-old Mr. Moussaoui told U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema at his arraignment. Asked by Judge Brinkema if she should interpret this as a plea of "not guilty," one of Moussaoui's attorneys said she should.
Four of the six conspiracy charges Moussaoui faces carry a maximum penalty of death. Federal prosecutors haven't formally said they will seek the death penalty against Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, though they are widely expected to do so. The government has until March 29 to file its reasons for seeking the death penalty in this case.
Moussaoui was in jail in Minnesota when the attacks occurred. He was detained for an immigration violation after instructors at a flight school he attended there grew suspicious and reported him to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Attorney General John Ashcroft has said that Moussaoui's activities before his arrest tracked those of the 19 other hijackers and suggested that Moussaoui was intended to be the 20th hijacker.
The Pentagon, the site of one of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, is just miles away from the federal courthouse where Moussaoui was arraigned. Prosecutors chose to indict Moussaoui in Alexandria, Virginia, primarily because jurors here are considered far more likely to impose a death sentence than jurors in New York, where Moussaoui was held prior to his indictment.