THE only man convicted in connection with the 9/11 terrorist attacks began plotting the downfall of western society from the austere surroundings of the British Library.

Newly released court papers reveal the most detailed account yet of the life of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was once dubbed the “20th hijacker”, during his nine years in London.

They show how Moussaoui, who is serving a life sentence in a US maximum security jail, was able to exploit the British education and social security systems despite warnings from foreign intelligence agencies about the danger he posed.

The documents are among more than 1,200 exhibits submitted as evidence at Moussaoui’s trial at a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, and published on the internet last week. They reveal: oHow Moussaoui used his studies at South Bank University to obtain a five-year reading pass at the British Library.

• Handwritten notes in which Moussaoui curses the Queen and describes her as the “Little Bitch of Buckingham”.
  
• How the Muslim extremist was supported by a church-backed housing body when he first arrived destitute in the capital from France.
  
• E-mails to US flight training schools in which Moussaoui says his “dream” is to fly a “Big Bird” 747 jet from Heathrow.

  The evidence, some of which has been declassified for the first time, also confirms that Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the planners of the 9/11 atrocity, flew to London from Germany in December 2000 to meet Moussaoui.

  Another document, written by an FBI agent before the attacks on New York and Washington, accuses Omar Bakri Mohammed, the radical preacher now barred from Britain, of sending his Al-Muhajiroun supporters to flight training schools in America.

  Moussaoui, 38, narrowly escaped the death penalty in May after pleading guilty to six conspiracy charges over the 9/11 attacks. The US authorities had initially suspected him of being the 20th hijacker who should have been on United Airlines flight 93, had he not been arrested in August 2001. That suspicion was dropped but Moussaoui was still convicted because he knew of the plot and kept quiet.

  One of the most intriguing pieces of evidence released online by the court are photos of Moussaoui’s British Library reading pass. The library confirmed this weekend that Moussaoui was issued with a five-year pass in 1994 after he had enrolled on a master’s degree course in international business at South Bank University.

  Although Special Branch officers are believed to have made inquiries about his dealings with the library, the books he read there remain a mystery.

  What is certain, however, is that by the time Moussaoui’s pass expired in July 1999 he was a hardened extremist who had already travelled to Afghanistan and Chechnya to fight with the mujaheddin.

  To his family, who live in Narbonne, southern France, Moussaoui was unrecognisable from the carefree young man who arrived in London in February 1992. Moussaoui, who spoke virtually no English, slept rough for several nights before being put up in a hostel in Earls Court run by English Churches Housing.

  The group helped Moussaoui secure welfare benefits and later supported his application for a two-bedroom housing association flat in Christchurch Road, Brixton, south London.

  Moussaoui is thought to have moved into the flat in late 1993. By then, he had also enrolled on a course at South Bank, an institution which, he told his brother Abd-Samad, was linked to Cambridge University.

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