A cockpit recording from a plane hijacked on September 11 will be played in public for the first time at a trial to decide whether Zacarias Moussaoui should be executed, a judge ruled on Wednesday.
Judge Leonie Brinkema agreed to a prosecution request to play the tape from United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after a passenger uprising against the hijackers.
The cockpit voice tape has never been played in public.
According to CNN television, former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani will testify for the prosecution in the second phase of the Moussaoui trial, which will resume on Thursday in Alexandria, Virginia.
Giuliani’s dynamism and compassion in dealing with the devastation of the World Trade Centre attacks, which cost about 3 000 lives, made him one of the country’s most admired politicians.
The prosecution intends to present the September 11 attacks in all their monstrosity: never-before-seen photos, desperate calls for help and wrenching testimony by the victims’ families and loved ones.
On Monday the jury decided that the 37-year-old Frenchman was eligible for the death penalty for his role in the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks, agreeing with the prosecution case that Moussaoui’s lies after he was detained in August 2001 facilitated the attacks.
The jury now must decide whether Moussaoui will be executed or imprisoned for life without parole.
They will hear the cockpit tape of Flight 93, which had left Newark, New Jersey, bound for San Francisco, on September 11 when it was hijacked.
The jet crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. The 33 passengers, seven crew members and four terrorists were all killed.
Authorities believe the hijackers were trying to get the plane to Washington to attack a target such as the White House or the Congress building. Washington was only about 20 minutes’ flying time from the crash site.
Brinkema noted the tape would be played in recognition of a recent court decision that supports public access to the evidence in the trial.
”However, the court is also mindful that family members of the flight crew or passengers on Flight 93 may object to the voices of their loved ones being publicly revealed in this manner,” Brinkema said in a written decision.
Unless the court receives a written objection from a family member of one of the Flight 93 victims by 5pm next Tuesday, the evidence will be made available to the public the day after the tape has been played to the court and admitted as evidence.
The defence case will concentrate on Moussaoui’s mental health and the abuse he suffered as a child in a bid to save him from death. – AFP
