Sadiq Khan was the consultant lawyer for the captured 9/11 Al Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui.
Sadiq Khan did consult for the defence of Zacarias Moussaoui, although Mr Khan never represented the man in court and has never met him.
A Facebook post with over 600 shares has claimed that Mayor of London Sadiq Khan was the consultant lawyer for the “captured 9/11 Al Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui”.
Zacarias Moussaoui is a French national who was arrested in August 2001 after arousing suspicion whilst studying at a flight school. Later, he was the only person to be convicted in the US in connection to the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Before he became an MP and then Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan was a solicitor specialising in human rights.
The Guardian reported in 2016 that Mr Khan had said he’d never represented Zacarias Moussaoui, but that his firm had consulted on Moussaoui’s defence. The mayor’s office confirmed to us that Mr Khan was consulting for the defence on that case, but did not represent Moussaoui and has never met him.
The image in the post of a man standing behind a woman comes from a 2002 news report in French recorded at the start of Moussaoui’s trial in Alexandria, Virginia. The woman being interviewed is Zacarias Moussaoui’s mother, Aicha el-Wafi.
The man standing behind her is Mr Khan, and the Mayor of London’s office confirmed this to us.
There are court documents mentioning Mr Khan—the defendant seems to have personally asked for Mr Khan to have security clearance to meet him. The response from the US government, which was prosecuting, reasoned that they should not be allowed to meet. A ruling from the judge in October 2002 denied the request. The Mayor of London’s office confirmed to us that Mr Khan never met Moussaoui.
Mr Khan could not have represented the defendant, because (as pointed out by the US government) he wasn’t licensed to practise law in that region.
Zacarias Moussaoui was sentenced in 2006, after Sadiq Khan left the law firm to campaign to be an MP in 2004.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as true as Mr Khan’s then-law firm did consult on the defence for Zacarias Moussaoui, who was later convicted of being a 9/11 conspirator, although Mr Khan did not directly represent him.
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