Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in a U.S. court for the
September 11 attacks, should go to prison for life rather than be executed for
his role in the hijacking plot, a jury decided on Wednesday.
Zacarias Moussaoui in an undated
photo. The September 11 conspirator should spend his life in prison
instead of being executed for his role in the hijacked airliner attacks, a
jury decided on Wednesday. [Reuters] |
Federal prosecutors had argued Moussaoui's failure to warn law enforcement
officers who detained him about the upcoming attacks made him as guilty as if he
had carried them out himself.
Not all members of the jury of nine men and three women, who last month found
Moussaoui eligible for execution, agreed. The law requires a unanimous verdict
for a sentence of death.
The 37-year-old French citizen of Moroccan descent, who was in jail on
September 11, 2001, after raising suspicions at a flight school, will be
formally sentenced on Thursday.
"America you lost!" Moussaoui shouted as he left the courtroom. He clapped
his hands and shouted, "I won!"
The verdict in the complicated case marked a defeat for government
prosecutors, who had asked jurors to return the death penalty against Moussaoui,
an admitted al Qaeda member who expressed no remorse at trial for the September
11 victims.
Legal expert David Rossman, of Boston University law school, said the
prosecution was hurt by evidence in the courtroom of shortcomings in the
FBI's handling of the case.
"It's very easy to say the government lost in terms of public relations. ...
People will be looking at the FBI without those rose-colored glasses."
Perhaps more important, the case took on symbolic weight from the lingering
trauma of September 11 that the prosecution could not sustain.
"It was a mistake of the government to make Moussaoui the poster child for
the 9/11 conspiracy to begin with," added Daniel Benjamin, a terrorism analyst
and former member of the Clinton administration.
The verdict was reached after seven days of deliberations and was read by
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema at the courthouse in Alexandria, not far
from the
Pentagon, the site of one of the 2001 attacks.
Last year, Moussaoui pleaded guilty to six counts of conspiracy, three of
which could have carried a sentence of death.
