Washington Sniper 'delusional and Paranoid'

The convicted Washington area sniper John Allen Muhammad is "psychotic", "delusional" and "paranoid", according to a psychiatrist who has interviewed him ahead of his May trial for six of 10 killings in America in 2002.

Muhammad has already been sentenced to death for one of the killings on a filling station forecourt, and is today due to appear in court to support his request to fire his defence lawyers and represent himself at trial.

The Montgomery circuit judge James Ryan must assess Muhammad's competency before deciding whether to allow him to represent himself.

When acting in his own defence at his earlier trial he made a 20-minute rambling address to the jury musing on the meaning of truth and how he once wrongly accused his daughter of raiding a biscuit jar.

The Yale University psychiatrist Dorothy Lewis interviewed Muhammad twice in September 2003 and for four hours on Monday. She wrote that his judgment and ability to think logically were "severely compromised" by brain dysfunction and that he probably suffered from "schizo-affective schizophrenia".

During Monday's interview, Muhammad seemed paranoid, Dr Lewis wrote. He claimed that his lawyers were withholding information that was important to his defence and told her: "It was never my intention to be represented by an attorney."

Lewis said the sniper told her that he was innocent and his arrest "was the result of an elaborate scheme to frame him for the murders".

She wrote that Muhammad told her he also believed his accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo, who was 17 at the time of the killings, had been "fed information by the police and forced to make a false confession".

Malvo is scheduled to go on trial in Montgomery county in the autumn for the same six murders.

Muhammad has refused to assist his lawyers, saying that he cannot share his "secret defence strategy" with them because "they cannot be trusted".

Muhammad was sentenced to death for a sniper shooting in Manassas, Virginia, after a jury found him guilty of murder, terrorism, conspiracy and illegal use of a weapon.

Malvo was convicted of murder of at least two people, murder as an act of terrorism, and the use of a firearm in committing a crime. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Muhammad and Malvo were caught asleep in their modified car at a roadside rest stop. A circular hole had been cut in the boot, through which they had been able to take aim at their targets.