Gold9472
05-03-2006, 04:45 PM
Jury spares 9/11 plotter Moussaoui
9/11 trial ends after wrenching images, heartbreaking testimony
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/LAW/05/03/moussaoui.verdict/
From Phil Hirschkorn
Wednesday, May 3, 2006 Posted: 2039 GMT (0439 HKT)
ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (CNN) -- Al Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui should spend the rest of his life in prison for his role in the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, a federal jury decided Wednesday.
The nine men and three women returned their verdict on the seventh day of deliberations after reliving the September 11 attacks through weeks of harrowing testimony and evidence.
U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema will formally sentence Moussaoui Thursday at 10 a.m.
Jurors sent a note Wednesday afternoon indicating they had reached a verdict. The jury had two choices -- death by injection or life in prison.
During the trial's monthlong penalty phase, jurors heard the voices of the doomed office workers at New York's World Trade Center calling 911 for help and listened to the first public playing of the cockpit voice recorder of United Airlines Flight 93.
They watched videos of victims leaping to their deaths from the flaming twin towers. They were shown images of charred remains found in the rubble of the trade center and at the Pentagon in northern Virginia, about 10 miles from the Alexandria courthouse where the trial was held.
And they twice heard from an unrepentant Moussaoui, who said he is willing to kill Americans "any time, anywhere." (Full story)
First 9/11 conviction in U.S.
Moussaoui, 37, a Frenchman of Moroccan heritage, is the first person convicted in the United States for his role in the attacks. Nearly 3,000 people died when hijacked passenger jets crashed into the trade center, Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
Although he was behind bars on September 11, Moussaoui pleaded guilty last year to terrorism conspiracy.
Three of the six conspiracy counts made him eligible for the death penalty: committing acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, destroying aircraft and using planes as weapons of mass destruction.
The purpose of the eight-week trial was to determine Moussaoui's punishment. Jurors first found that Moussaoui's lies to federal investigators a month before the attacks furthered al Qaeda's plot and directly resulted in at least some 9/11 deaths, making the defendant eligible for execution. (Full story)
In the trial's second phase, jurors weighed factors such as the heinousness of the crime and its impact on the victims' families against Moussaoui's background and mental health.
About 30 family members of 9/11 victims, along with attack survivors and emergency responders, described how their lives have been changed. One after the other, widows and widowers, fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters and friends shared heart-wrenching stories of loss.
Perhaps the trial's most dramatic moment came when prosecutors played the cockpit voice recorder from Flight 93. It made clear passengers' efforts to retake control of the aircraft before the hijackers crashed it outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania. (Full story)
Defense focuses on mental illness
Defense attorneys focused on Moussaoui's mental health, calling experts who diagnosed him as a delusional paranoid schizophrenic. The jury heard that Moussaoui's troubled family history includes two sisters and an abusive father who suffer from mental illness. (Full story)
Moussaoui's friends from France and England, where he earned a business school degree in the early 1990s, described a young man with a big smile who enjoyed life. But Moussaoui underwent a transformation, falling under the spell of Muslim radicals who targeted recent converts such as him at a mosque in London's Brixton section, according to the defense.
"You could see the disdain on his face, " said mosque chairman Abdul Haqq Baker in a videotape played for the jury. "He was very keen to implement whatever drive was given to him for jihad."
On the stand, Moussaoui said he knew in advance of the plan to hijack passenger jets and fly them into the World Trade Center. He said he was supposed to hijack a fifth plane and fly it into the White House with Richard Reid, known as the shoe bomber.
Reid is serving a life sentence for attempting to set off a bomb hidden in his sneakers on a flight from Paris, France, to Miami, Florida, that was safely diverted to Boston, Massachusetts.
A statement from Reid, backed up by the FBI, contradicted Moussaoui's testimony that the two men were supposed to hijack a plane together. (Full story)
Moussaoui shows no remorse
On the witness stand, Moussaoui displayed a complete lack of remorse for the 9/11 deaths, saying he was sorry only that the attacks weren't more lethal.
"I just wish it could have gone on the 12th, the 13th, the 14th, the 15th, the 16th, the 17th. We can go on and on," Moussaoui said. "Like they say, no pain, no gain."
His attorneys asked the jury not to give him the death penalty and make him an al Qaeda martyr.
September 11 family members rotated through the main courtroom observing the trial in six seats reserved for them three rows behind Moussaoui.
More family members watched the trial on a closed-circuit broadcast available elsewhere in the Alexandria courthouse and in federal courthouses in Manhattan and Long Island, New York; Newark, New Jersey; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Boston.
"I am convinced he's not crazy in the legal sense, in that he can, and does, distinguish right from wrong," said Hamilton Peterson, who attended the trial. His father and stepmother died aboard Flight 93.
"I do think he is sick in the evil sense," Peterson added. "He absolutely gets it, specifically, the 9/11 conspiracy he was a part of and his desire for American blood."
9/11 trial ends after wrenching images, heartbreaking testimony
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/LAW/05/03/moussaoui.verdict/
From Phil Hirschkorn
Wednesday, May 3, 2006 Posted: 2039 GMT (0439 HKT)
ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (CNN) -- Al Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui should spend the rest of his life in prison for his role in the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, a federal jury decided Wednesday.
The nine men and three women returned their verdict on the seventh day of deliberations after reliving the September 11 attacks through weeks of harrowing testimony and evidence.
U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema will formally sentence Moussaoui Thursday at 10 a.m.
Jurors sent a note Wednesday afternoon indicating they had reached a verdict. The jury had two choices -- death by injection or life in prison.
During the trial's monthlong penalty phase, jurors heard the voices of the doomed office workers at New York's World Trade Center calling 911 for help and listened to the first public playing of the cockpit voice recorder of United Airlines Flight 93.
They watched videos of victims leaping to their deaths from the flaming twin towers. They were shown images of charred remains found in the rubble of the trade center and at the Pentagon in northern Virginia, about 10 miles from the Alexandria courthouse where the trial was held.
And they twice heard from an unrepentant Moussaoui, who said he is willing to kill Americans "any time, anywhere." (Full story)
First 9/11 conviction in U.S.
Moussaoui, 37, a Frenchman of Moroccan heritage, is the first person convicted in the United States for his role in the attacks. Nearly 3,000 people died when hijacked passenger jets crashed into the trade center, Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
Although he was behind bars on September 11, Moussaoui pleaded guilty last year to terrorism conspiracy.
Three of the six conspiracy counts made him eligible for the death penalty: committing acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, destroying aircraft and using planes as weapons of mass destruction.
The purpose of the eight-week trial was to determine Moussaoui's punishment. Jurors first found that Moussaoui's lies to federal investigators a month before the attacks furthered al Qaeda's plot and directly resulted in at least some 9/11 deaths, making the defendant eligible for execution. (Full story)
In the trial's second phase, jurors weighed factors such as the heinousness of the crime and its impact on the victims' families against Moussaoui's background and mental health.
About 30 family members of 9/11 victims, along with attack survivors and emergency responders, described how their lives have been changed. One after the other, widows and widowers, fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters and friends shared heart-wrenching stories of loss.
Perhaps the trial's most dramatic moment came when prosecutors played the cockpit voice recorder from Flight 93. It made clear passengers' efforts to retake control of the aircraft before the hijackers crashed it outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania. (Full story)
Defense focuses on mental illness
Defense attorneys focused on Moussaoui's mental health, calling experts who diagnosed him as a delusional paranoid schizophrenic. The jury heard that Moussaoui's troubled family history includes two sisters and an abusive father who suffer from mental illness. (Full story)
Moussaoui's friends from France and England, where he earned a business school degree in the early 1990s, described a young man with a big smile who enjoyed life. But Moussaoui underwent a transformation, falling under the spell of Muslim radicals who targeted recent converts such as him at a mosque in London's Brixton section, according to the defense.
"You could see the disdain on his face, " said mosque chairman Abdul Haqq Baker in a videotape played for the jury. "He was very keen to implement whatever drive was given to him for jihad."
On the stand, Moussaoui said he knew in advance of the plan to hijack passenger jets and fly them into the World Trade Center. He said he was supposed to hijack a fifth plane and fly it into the White House with Richard Reid, known as the shoe bomber.
Reid is serving a life sentence for attempting to set off a bomb hidden in his sneakers on a flight from Paris, France, to Miami, Florida, that was safely diverted to Boston, Massachusetts.
A statement from Reid, backed up by the FBI, contradicted Moussaoui's testimony that the two men were supposed to hijack a plane together. (Full story)
Moussaoui shows no remorse
On the witness stand, Moussaoui displayed a complete lack of remorse for the 9/11 deaths, saying he was sorry only that the attacks weren't more lethal.
"I just wish it could have gone on the 12th, the 13th, the 14th, the 15th, the 16th, the 17th. We can go on and on," Moussaoui said. "Like they say, no pain, no gain."
His attorneys asked the jury not to give him the death penalty and make him an al Qaeda martyr.
September 11 family members rotated through the main courtroom observing the trial in six seats reserved for them three rows behind Moussaoui.
More family members watched the trial on a closed-circuit broadcast available elsewhere in the Alexandria courthouse and in federal courthouses in Manhattan and Long Island, New York; Newark, New Jersey; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Boston.
"I am convinced he's not crazy in the legal sense, in that he can, and does, distinguish right from wrong," said Hamilton Peterson, who attended the trial. His father and stepmother died aboard Flight 93.
"I do think he is sick in the evil sense," Peterson added. "He absolutely gets it, specifically, the 9/11 conspiracy he was a part of and his desire for American blood."