A United States jury rejected the death penalty for al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and ruled he should be jailed for life without parole for his role in the September 11 attacks conspiracy.
The verdict handed down on Wednesday was a setback for the US government which threw enormous resources into pressing for the execution of the only person charged in the United States over the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington in which almost 3 000 people died.
True to his stormy and unpredictable character, Moussaoui shouted ”America you lost … I won”, as he was led from the court. Judge Leonie Brinkema will formally pronounce the sentence in court on Thursday morning.
Relatives of the September 11 victims expressed mixed emotions. Many were just happy that the trial was over.
”I am glad to see this will be the last day that Mr Moussaoui is in the headlines,” said Carrie Lemack, whose mother, Judy Larocque, was a passenger on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.
”He deserves to rot in jail,” she added.
Prosecutors signalled they will not make a new attempt to secure a death penalty. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty said ”the jury has spoken and we respect and accept this verdict and we thank them for their service”.
President George Bush said Moussaoui ”got a fair trial”.
The jury ”spared his life, which is something that he evidently wasn’t willing to do for innocent American citizens,” Bush said during a joint press conference with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
In a statement issued earlier, Bush said the United States would ”stay on the offensive” in its global ”war on terror”.
At the end of a trial which lasted two months, the nine-man three-woman jury rejected execution after more than 40 hours of deliberations spread over seven days.
The jury did not ”unanimously find a sentence of death should be imposed on the defendant,” Judge Brinkema said.
Moussaoui had pleaded guilty to six charges of conspiracy over the al-Qaeda attacks using hijacked planes.
He was detained in August 2001 but prosecutors had argued that his ”lethal lies” while in detention had helped the al-Qaeda hijackers go ahead with the attacks unhindered.
The jury agreed in the first phase of the trial that Moussaoui had contributed toward the deaths and so was eligible for the death penalty.
But it did not come up with the unanimous verdict needed to recommend execution. Court documents did not indicate how many jurors voted for life prison and how many in favour of death, if any.
In court, Moussaoui refused an order to stand for the verdict. He sat calmly in his chair as Brinkema said the jury had ruled for life in prison.
Moussaoui gave a ”V” for victory sign to the defence lawyers he refused to cooperate with throughout the hearings.
After the jury had gone and he was being led out of the court, Moussaoui shouted: ”America you lost, David Novak [the prosecutor] you lost … I won”.
Moussaoui stunned the trial by claiming that he knew the World Trade Center was a key target and that would have flown a hijacked jet into the White House on September 11, had he not been arrested weeks earlier.
His statements conflicted with all previous accounts of the strikes, as well as with Moussaoui’s own earlier admission that he was to have been part of a second wave of attacks.
His lawyers said Moussaoui’s claims were overblown, that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, that he was only involved in the plot ”in his dreams”, and that he wanted to become an al-Qaeda ”martyr”.
If the judge rubber stamps the verdict, as expected, Moussaoui will go to the notorious ”Supermax” prison in Florence, Colorado where a number of other al-Qaeda followers serving life terms are held.
Though the defence won, the lawyers expressed their frustration, almost anger, at Moussaoui for his obstructive attitude.
”I haven’t spoken to Mr Moussaoui in a long time and that’s fine with me,” said Ed MacMahon, one of the court appointed defence lawyers.
He said the jury had denied Moussaoui’s wish for an early death.
”Moussaoui came to our country to die and now he’s going to have to wait for a long time to do it,” MacMahon declared.
The prosecution brought dozens of survivors of the September 11 attacks and the families of the victims to court to portray the horror of the day. Heart-wrenching evidence was read and shown to the jury.
”Personally I’m disappointed. My son didn’t see his 33rd birthday,” said David Beamer, father of Todd Beamer, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93 which crashed in a Pennsylvania field on September 11.
”Among other things, he is a coward,” Beamer told Fox News television. However, he said the jury fairly performed its duty.
Abraham Scott, whose wife Janice died when one plane hit the Pentagon in Washington, said he agreed with the jurors’ decision and that it would bring him closure and help him move on with his life.
The French embassy said in a statement that the trial had been carried out in ”exemplary fashion”, while also revealing that Moussaoui has refused to meet French diplomats. – AFP
