A jury found on Monday that Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person to be prosecuted in connection with the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, was eligible for the death penalty. The verdict, after less than three days of deliberation, comes as a boost to federal prosecutors, who had seen their case almost derailed by the alleged coaching of witnesses by a government lawyer.
But legal experts concurred that the decisive moment in the case came when Moussaoui took the stand against the advice of his court-appointed lawyers.
The jury of nine men and three women found that Moussaoui’s lies to FBI agents following his arrest in August 2001 on an immigration violation led to at least one death in the attacks. His trial now moves to the second sentencing phase, in which the same jurors will determine whether he should be executed.
The 37-year-old French citizen pleaded guilty in April last year to conspiring with al-Qaeda to hijack aircraft and other crimes. The jury found Moussaoui guilty on all three counts it considered: that he had lied to federal agents, that he had done so knowing that human life would be taken and that at least one victim of the attacks died as a result of his actions.
Inside the court in Arlington, Virginia, Moussaoui, sat reciting a prayer. He refused to stand for the verdict; as he was led out of the courtroom he shouted: ”You’ll never get my blood, God curse you all.”
Both prosecution and defence teams immediately filed motions with the court which are expected to outline aggravating and mitigating circumstances respectively. The next phase, which could prove even more harrowing for relatives of victims of the attacks than the proceedings to date, is scheduled to start on Thursday.
Prosecutors will attempt to persuade the jury that the 9/11 attacks were especially ”cruel and heinous” and they merit the death penalty. The second sentencing phase is likely to include tape recordings of calls made from passengers on the hijacked planes, emergency calls from those trapped inside the World Trade Centre in New York as well as testimony from the relatives of victims of the attacks.
But victims’ relatives are expected to appear for the defence as well as the prosecution. Carrie Lemack, co-founder of Families of 9/11, expressed her ”disappointment” at the verdict on Monday. ”We don’t want to make him a martyr,” she told CNN. ”We feel that he should rot in jail … without having this notoriety.”
The trial of Moussaoui produced a series of surprises. Last week, Moussaoui said in testimony that he had been part of a planned second wave of attacks. With the British ”shoe bomber” Richard Reid, Moussaoui said he was to hijack a plane and fly it into the White House.
To secure the verdict, the prosecution had to play a delicate balancing act. It endeavoured to show that had Moussaoui told investigators what he knew about the planned attacks, they could have been prevented. But previously, federal authorities had insisted that even had they received information about an imminent attack, as they did in the so-called ”Phoenix memo” filed by an FBI field agent, they would not have been able to prevent the attacks. Several witnesses in the trial undermined the prosecution’s assertion that Moussaoui’s silence contributed to the success of the 9/11 attacks.
The defence also produced statements from al-Qaeda leaders saying Moussaoui was a nuisance and a hanger-on. When arrested, Moussaoui was enrolled at a flying school in the US. He had received $14 000 from al-Qaeda in early August 2001 and had bought two of the same sort of knives used by the hijackers. – Guardian Unlimited Â